All my lies are always wishes.

My gateway drug.

I’ve always believed that anyone who is really, really into music has a band that lit the fire, opened the doors on being that music kid. Chuck Klosterman has KISS, my dad has The Beatles. Telling one of my editors this a few weeks ago, she captured it in an interesting way. She called it a “gateway drug” into music. It summed it up perfectly. (Hers was Bikini Kill, btw, which is actually really fitting, since she grew up in the ’90s in Portland and seems politically-minded and feminist in her views.) I think these bands tend to tell a lot about the person.

Most people who know me even a little well know that the band who really got me into music was Weezer. I’m talking 1994-2001 Weezer, with the “Green Album” being the first CD I owned by them. I was 13, learning what “touching yourself” meant only after listening to “Across the Sea” and writing embarassing love letters to Rivers Cuomo. I could name at least five distinct memories in my lifetime that have involved Weezer. I used to count down the days to the first Weezer show (my first concert ever, in fact) I went to with a tally I kept on the flap of my binder every morning during first period alegebra. I was a lonely, unthinkably depressed, nerdy kid in 8th grade. I played guitar and wrote bad poetry in a yellow and red notebook with Madeline (the French doll/cartoon) on the cover. I used to pretend to faint in the hallway between classes just for fun. I was significantly upset for weeks after George Harrison died that year, and I wrote cynical movie reviews for my middle school newspaper. That was the year I bought my first pair of Chuck Taylors and thick plastic glasses.

One of my biggest thrills during that time was when Rivers was on the cover of Guitar World, sporting a bushy, mysteriously red beard and talked about obscure European metal guitarists from the ’80s for the entirety of the interview. I ripped out the pages and taped them to the Pepto Bismal-pink walls of my little girl bedroom.* My mother did not understand me. My father tried to understand me, but I’m fairly certain he did not, either, and hoped it would be a phase. Of course my peers did not understand me, except for the one rocker boy whom I would continue to have the world’s biggest school-girl crush on until I got my first boyfriend the summer before 10th grade. What I’m saying is this: I was essentially destined to become obsessed with Weezer. It made sense.

I read an article about Rivers during the summer of 2002 in Rolling Stone that changed my life. It was called “Rivers Cuomo’s Encyclopedia of Pop,”** written by a woman who could very well be my favorite music writer (Ms. Jenny Eliscu). I was in a Barnes and Noble when I read the piece. Most people hope they will never experience life-changing circumstances in an overpriced chain bookstore, but I tend to believe these things are out of our control. This article single-handedly made me want to become a music journalist, pretty much exclusively in the hope that I, too, could someday hang out with Rivers Cuomo and that maybe — just maybe — he would fall in love with me despite the fact that 1.) he graduated high school the year I was born and 2.) I’m not Asian.*** But I held onto that dream for a really, really long time — all the way until high school, during which time I actually did start writing about local music and under-the-radar bands that I thought my peers should be listening to. I wrote a review of Weezer’s show with the Foo Fighters up in Cleveland that won me a 3rd place award in a tri-state journalism competition my senior year. I was convinced the band was my good luck charm.

I’m coming up on the fifth anniversary of my first published article about music this September. I owe it all to Weezer, yet I’ve pretty much only written about the band in published works on two occasions. In the next two weeks, however, I find myself with two separate assignments about the band for Billboard. Tomorrow I’m reviewing the new single, titled “(If You Are Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To,” and reviewing the band’s Cleveland show with Blink-182 on the 2nd. I feel inadequate and mildly intimidated, actually. How does one describe the band that changed her life in a way that doesn’t read like a love letter while still being honest?**** Given, it isn’t nearly as intimidating as actually interviewing the man, the myth — Rivers Cuomo. Give me a year or two and maybe then we will have met.

*Soon after I painted my room the exact shade of green used on the cover of Weezer’s “Green Album,” which I took to Lowe’s as a color reference. It remains this color.
**It is a wonder that this article is available online. I am genuinely shocked and thankful for Rolling Stone archives, though I do have the clipped article in a “Rivers only” folder under my bed back home. Also, please note that Brian Bell says that Weezer will never sound like Limp Bizkit. I am starting to doubt that statement.
***I had a significant complex about not being Asian from the ages of 14 to 16.
****Yes, I realize that Weezer’s last two albums blow chunks. People ask me this all the time. I don’t live under a rock.