Weezer (2008 Album) - Reception

Reception

The album received generally positive reviews, with a Metacritic score of 64, based on 32 reviews. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic gave the album a positive review of 4 and a half stars out of five calling the album, "A cheerfully restless record, one where all the parts don't fit and it's better because of it, as it has a wild, willing personality, suggesting that Weezer is comfortable as a band in a way they never quite have been before." The Boston Globe called the songs, "consistently vibrant, catchy, and well-built." IGN also gave the album a positive review stating, "The Red Album is totally bizarre, a certifiable mess, and a hell of a lot of fun." NME complimented Cuomo's songwriting saying, "Musically, it’s a record that does much to further the claim for Cuomo’s songwriting greatness."

Among the negative reviews, Tiny Mix Tapes called the album "a sad portrait of a band that has been totally destroyed by fame and the pressures that come along with it," and The Onion A.V. club saying: "If the so-called 'Red Album' really is an elaborate goof on an all-too-forgiving fan base, that doesn't make Weezer's newest worst album any less insipid." Pitchfork Media gave the record 4.7/10, lamenting that "like the YouTube culture the 'Pork and Beans' video depicts so well, the song-- and this album-- relies on a high quantity of short-lived pretty good ideas to distract from a shortage of great ones." Prefix Magazine said that if The Red Album's "songs were formulaic, shiny, and easily digestible like everything on Green or Maladroit, the vacuity of the new songs wouldn't be as big a problem. But 'Heart Songs,' 'Thought I Knew'--these are just plain bad."

The Red Album debuted at the fourth spot of the Billboard 200, with 126,000 copies sold in its first week. As of August 2009, according to Nielsen SoundScan, The Red Album has sold 443,000 copies.