Hurley is the eighth studio album by Weezer, released in 2010. It is their only release on Epitaph Records before they were signed to current label Crush Records.
Following the scathing response to their previous album Raditude, this album backpedaled on many of the things established with that album, abandoning its poppier sound in favor of a heavier, more guitar-oriented sound. The band heavily utilized YouTube to promote the album, including cameo appearances in videos by iconic figures on the site at the turn of the decade, namely Fred, The Annoying Orange, and Tay Zonday.
The album notably features actor Jorge Garcia on the cover (cropped from a picture of him together with Cuomo in the green room of Lopez Tonight, as he and Weezer taped for the show on the same day), and was named after his famous role as Hugo "Hurley" Reyes on the TV series Lost. Weezer originally intended for this to be yet another self-titled album, but quickly realized that fans would retrospectively refer to it as The Hurley Album to separate it from the band's other self-titled releases, so they decided to just call the album Hurley instead.
Hurley unfortunately remains Weezer's worst-performing album, selling even less than what Pinkerton did at release. While the album charted at #6 on the Billboard 200, it quickly dropped off to #24 before disappearing from the charts entirely. Only two singles spawned from the album: "Memories", which was featured in the film Jackass 3D, and "Hang On", which features Michael Cera on backing vocals.
Tracklist:
- "Memories" (3:16)
- "Ruling Me" (3:30)
- "Trainwrecks" (3:21)
- "Unspoken" (3:01)
- "Where's My Sex?" (3:28)
- "Run Away" (3:55)
- "Hang On" (3:33)
- "Smart Girls" (3:11)
- "Brave New World" (2:57)
- "Time Flies" (3:42)
Deluxe Edition bonus tracks:
- "All My Friends Are Insects" (1:53)
- "Viva la Vida" (4:06)
- "I Want to Be Something" (2:56)
- "Represent" (Rocked Out mix) (4:13)
Principal Members:
- Rivers Cuomo – lead vocals
- Brian Bell – guitar, backing vocals
- Scott Shriner – bass, backing vocals
- Patrick Wilson – guitar, backing vocals
Where's my tropes?
- Audience Participation Song: Memories, featuring the whole cast of Jackass 3D singing the chorus.
- Book Ends: The album opens with a song about recalling all of the wild and reckless things you've done as a kid and the ends with a song about coming to terms with getting old.
- Break-Up Song: "Run Away".
- Downer Ending: "Time Flies" is a rather somber mid-life crisis song that juxtaposes with songs like "Memories" and "Where's My Sex".
- Feeling Their Age: "Time Flies" is about Rivers realizing that he's getting old.
- Gainax Ending: The album ends with the faint chimes and ticking of clocks.
- Geeky Turn-On: "Smart Girls" is about how Rivers loves being around them.
- Genre Shift: "Time Flies" is a lo-fi song in the vein of early Ween.
- Intercourse with You: "Where's My Sex" seems to take this trope to its logical extreme if you don't realize it's actually about socks.
- New Sound Album: The album abandons the poorly received dance pop sound on the previous album and was influenced by 2000's Post-Punk Revival. This is most evident in "Memories," "Ruling Me," "Trainwrecks," "Hang On" and "Smart Girls".
- Sexual Euphemism: Inverted. In "Where's My Sex", "sex" is a euphemism for "socks".
- Silly Love Songs: "Ruling Me".
- Stylistic Suck: "Time Flies" deliberately sounds like it was recorded on a cassette tape that was run over by a truck of magnets.
- "Sesame Street" Cred: The bonus track "All My Friends Are Insects" was a song the band preformed during their appearance on the children's television show Yo Gabba Gabba.
