This is what happens when you get Dwight Schrute to name your album. Weezer's seventh studio album is due October 27 on DGC Records, and frontman Rivers Cuomo turned to an unlikely source to grace it with a name: Rainn Wilson, better known as super-nerd Dwight Schrute on the hit sitcom "The Office".
"He has a super-rock persona," Cuomo explained to Billboard. "When it came time to find a title for the Weezer album, I asked him what he thought the ultimate album title would be and he said 'Raditude.'"
So Raditude it is. "The sound of "Raditude" is fun, high energy pop rock," Cuomo said. "Which is exemplified in a song like '(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To.' 'I'm Your Daddy,' has an up vibe with the same, heavy Weezer guitar riff but with a little electro influence. And 'The Girl Got Hot' - that's kind of a witty, party jam."
Names of other tracks include "Can't Stop Partying," which was co-written with vertically-challenged Janet ex Jermaine Dupri and first appeared on Cuomo's solo release, 2008's Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo. Additionally, a song called "Trippin' Down the Freeway," which was written weeks after the completion of 2008's eponymous album (a.k.a. "The Red Album") will appear.
Cuomo says Raditude was produced in the same recording process as their previous work, though he described the recording as "going at a relaxed pace" - but that's not to say it's a walk in the park. "I think making a rock record is rarely easy or smooth," he says. "It requires a lot of work and sometimes you have to write more songs that end up on the record; sometimes you have to go back and re-record a song more than once. Sometimes you have to switch studios or producers, you have to go on a bit of an exploration about what it is you're trying to make. And in those regards, I think 'Raditude' is pretty much normal. It wasn't necessarily easier or harder."
Blink 182 joins Weezer today (Aug 23) for a three week tour of North American amphitheatres.
