SZNZ: Summer

SZNZ: Summer
EP by Weezer
Released	June 21, 2022
Recorded	2021–2022
Genre	Pop rock
Length	23:41
Label	Crush Music/Atlantic Records
Producer(s)	Daniel Omelio, Suzy Shinn
Weezer chronology
SZNZ: Spring (2022) SZNZ: Summer (2022) SZNZ: Autumn (2022)

SZNZ: Summer is the second of four EPs by American rock band Weezer in their 2022 SZNZ series. Its predecessor, SZNZ: Spring, released on March 20, and it was greeted with positive reviews by both fans and critics. This led to many looking forward to the follow-up. SZNZ: Summer was released on June 21.

Leaks

The band were called "lazy" for just sitting around. Perhaps this is why the EP sounds so bad?

Cover art

On June 10, Amazon France accidentally uploaded the album cover on the pre-order page for the SZNZ: Summer CD and vinyl. Because of this, subsequently, Rivers Cuomo banned the French from listening to Weezer ever again. He said of the ban:

“ I mean, that's what they deserve. Speaking in their stupid accents, and waving around stupid white flags. ”

Australian Weezer fans, notably those in New South Wales, criticized the Summer album cover. Stating that when they look at it, they have PTSD flashbacks to the 2019–2020 bushfires. Summer cover art defenders responded by suggesting that those in Queensland could have donated some of their large excess of flood water to help combat the flames, despite it being two years too late for ideas.

Song snippets

After the success of Rivers Spotify clone, he decided to rip off another popular app. This time his target would be word guesser Weezle. Cuomo took the basics of the app and Weezer'd it, making Weezle as the finished app. The gimmick here, however, was that whenever a user guessed the days correct word, a snippet of a Weezer or Cuomo solo song would play. For some reason, Rivers added snippets of the eight SZNZ: Summer songs, along with their titles, even though the second SZN was not due to release for another few weeks. Because of this, three of the twenty minutes of the EP runtime was now known, which spoiled the entire album for some die hard fans.

Weezer fans on Twitter and Discord ponded on the thought of why he didn't just release the single "Records" a week early, as was the case with "A Little Bit of Love" on Spring. They then remembered that this was Rivers Cuomo they were talking about, and went on to talk about the important issues like why Raditude is better than Pinkerton.

"Records"

Fortnite

On June 17 the single for the album, "Records", was released on the in-game radio station on the hit video-game Fortnite. It was not available on any other platform, including Spotify, nor even Weezify. Since most Weezer fans are virgins, they already played Fortnite, so this was no issue for them. For the 1% have sex Weezer fans, however, they had to wait an extra four days for the full EP to release in order to hear the song, as well as the other six.

This is the second time a Weezer song has been added to the Fortnite radio, with the first being "All My Favorite Poems" from OK Human. Since "Records" contained a swear word, and that Fortnite is a 'kids game', despite it literally being a game about killing everybody on an island to win, Epic Games had to censor the song. They removed the lyric about holy bibles, but kept in the f-bomb — as per the Parents Against References To The Holy Bible In Video Games Association.

Spinning (that's a good trick)

Weezer chases away their fanbase even more.

Along with being added to Fortnite, the song was added to the website humanrecordplayer.com. In order to listen to music on the site, the listener needed to spin around while holding their phone so that the music could play — making the person a literal human record player, hence the site name.

Because of this, many listeners became dizzy, and therefore were unable to continue to listen to the song after they kept falling down, which stopped the music from playing. When asked to comment, Rivers said that "either you spin, or wait a few extra days for the full album to drop."

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

On June 20, Weezer performed the song live for the first time on Jimmy Kimmel's talk show. Like with "A Little Bit of Love", Cuomo played dress-up. Instead of being a green elf this time, he was instead a red Roman soldier that somehow managed to get to the future, find out what eyeshadow is, and learned to play the electric guitar. Additionally, the white rabbit from the Spring set had evolved into a Minotaur and learnt to play the keyboard (instead of the mandolin).

Reception

The general opinion among fans about SZNZ: Summer all pointed to, and is simply put, pretty flamin' good. The Australians that were once outraged by the cover art, were later seen saying that the album is "pretty lit fam."

Although Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and the IGN Music department have not released their 'professional' reviews yet, full-time YouTube music enjoyer, Mr. Needledrop Fantano, stated that "Spring was a nice, refreshing blast of Weezer, while Summer burns all that to the ground, and you're left with second-degree burns."

Track listing

Before its release, the only known and confirmed song for SZNZ: Summer was "Records", which like "A Little Bit of Love" on SZNZ: Spring was the single for the album. Like Spring and the other two SZN albums, it has a basic seven songs for its "main tracklist" on the CD and streaming services, with a bonus eighth song for the vinyl release — even though nobody uses a record player anymore. Cuomo said that he was making fun of this fact, by naming the Summer single after the long, forgotten format only still used by those that still think it's the '80s or are too old to know what a CD is.

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Grass Seat"	2:04
2.	"Vinyl"	3:29
3.	"Red Like Pop"	3:12
4.	"The Other Side of You"	3:30
5.	"What's the Bad of Being Bad"	4:02
6.	"Shriner Town"	3:16
7.	"Portal"	3:22
8.	"Thank Me and Good Morning"	4:05
Total length:		26:59

Personnel

• Rivers Cuomo – his usual contributions
• Brian Bell – guitar (duh)
• Patrick Wilson – drums (duh)
• Scott Shriner – bass (duh)