Not Just Good Eschatology, It’s Good Music, Too

“Everything Will Be Alright in the End.”

That’s not just good eschatology, it’s good music, too.

Today, one of my all-time favorite bands, Weezer, has a brand new album, its ninth, titled Everything Will Be Alright in the End. I’m really excited about the release of this album since the album is an intentional effort by Weezer to get back to its roots. Abandoning the awkward synthesizers and techno-fascination one came to experience with albums such as Ratitude and Hurley, this newest album is designed to be old-school Weezer, the type of Weezer more resonant of the Blue album, Pinkerton, and the Green album.

But there’s another reason I love Weezer. I’ll get to why, but I want to discuss the personalism of music and art for a moment. Everyone has attachments to some form of art one way or another. Art attaches itself to each of us for a myriad of reasons. Whether through sentiment, emotion, or memory, musical art somehow embeds itself with an eery permanence. For most people I know, music marks eras. It’s a looking glass into our past. Its recollection stirs memories of affection or even heartache. Music is the soundtrack of each person’s narrative. For me, that’s Weezer.

In April 2001, I was severely injured in a skiing accident in Colorado; expected to die, actually. I went without oxygen to my brain for over four minutes. I went into shock. I was helicoptered from Breckenridge to Denver, Colorado. I was in the hospital for 44 days, 27 of which were spent in an Intensive Care Unit. For two weeks I was in an induced coma where I would eventually have a tracheotomy (a scar I still bear on my lower neck) procedure done in order to allow for a ventilator to do my breathing. Being a 16 year-old runner who ran the mile in 5:02, I was forced to have to learn to walk again. I lost 40 pounds on an originally 155 pound frame. I endured eight operations to repair a lacerated liver. Neuropathy left nerve damage to various extremities, which I still have difficulty with today. My body still bears those wounds. I expected to go to college and run. That was no more. Instead, high school was spent with a nasty episode of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder while being carted in and out of doctors trying to repair one malady after another.

Extended hospital stays can be tortuous. I couldn’t rest in the hospital, as is common. I’d lay awake at night with a sense of worry, thinking that my hospital stay would never end. But I began to listen to music in the evening and whenever I grew restless. It helped calm my mind and gave me the focus to pray and understand God’s providence.

Music provided sanity. I don’t know what I would have done in the hospital if it weren’t for a collection of music—some of it Christian (I had just become a Christian in October 2000), some of it not. I must have listened to “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” by Sonic Flood a thousand times. That song seems a little too Jesus-Is-My-Boyfriend-Music now, but at the time, that song helped re-direct my anger and depression toward thoughts of a good Creator who loved His children. One way I experienced that love was through the power of music to remind me that in weakness, friendship and solidarity would play an important part of my recovery.

One day, while still in the hospital, I received a package from my good friend Mike. It was Weezer’s newest album, their Green album. He bought it for me and shipped it to the hospital. This was before the time of digital downloads and MP3s. I was esctatic. Mike and I listened to music together all throughout our childhood. We listened to a lot of music that we probably shouldn’t have, if I’m being honest. We developed a love for punk rock and emo, the type of music that relied on powerful, climactic power choruses and guitar riffs that sent all pre-teens into a state of euphoria and what-ifs. I can recall listening to Weezer’s Blue Album when it released in 1994, when I was just nine. To me, that’s one of the best albums in the history of music. Anyways,  Mike and I both loved Weezer and he took the effort to ship the new album to me. At that moment, it meant the world.  Receiving that CD in the excitement I did is probably one of the most vivid memories I have. I can even recall opening it from the packing envelope it was shipped in.

Weezer’s Green album is one of their best. It’s quintessential Weezer. I listened to that album non-stop. Today, when I see that album, I don’t think of the music contained therein. I think of where I listened to that music—in a hospital bed, one thousand miles away from anything I recognized as home. I think of who sent it to me and the symbolism enclosed in such an act of thoughtfulness. I think of how the power of healing was mediated through the power of listening.

Weezer provided a sense of home, a sense of memory of community, a longing to see my friends, my church, and my girlfriend (spoiler alert: I eventually married her).
So, as I greet Weezer’s newest album as a 29 year-old, I do so with the same anticipation as a 16 year-old, albeit in different circumstances. I won’t claim to be wiser than I am. But if I could go back and tell 16 year-old Andrew that Everything Will Be Alright in the End, I’d do so. I’ll probably need to preach that truth to myself whether I’m 43 or 72. Because, really, while this post is about Weezer, it’s about a lot more than Weezer. It’s about the good gifts that God gives to us. It’s about the evidence of Common Grace and Beauty that come to us through the power of song, community, and friendship. But it’s also true: Everything Will Be Alright in the End. Jesus said so (John 16:33).

Postlude: This past April, I was fortunate enough to have seen Weezer in concert here in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium. It was spectacular. A smaller venue, Weezer played a set of their greatest hits from all their albums, then an intermission, and then came out and played the Blue Album from start to finish. Epic, I tell you; absolutely epic and unforgettable. I shared that occasion with a friend, too; and forever burned in my memory is not only the music that night, but the occasion of sharing it with someone whose love for music is as strong as my own or even stronger.

*The picture above is one I took of Rivers Cuomo, Weezer’s lead singer and guitarist at Weezer’s concert in Nashville.
Here’s the album via Spotify:

A few reviews of the new album:
“Rocking and Persevering” from the New York Times
“Everything Will be Alright in the End” from The Rolling Stone

Because any mention of Weezer must include their famous Buddy Holly music video, I leave you with this: