I’ve never wanted any special treatment for being color blind, but I do appreciate the accommodations that society has provided to me that most chromatypicals take for granted. Minor things like mostly-standard stop light orientation, and major things like produce labels protecting unknowing taste buds from yucky green bell peppers both go a long way in helping people like me equitably navigate our lives, but I think more can still be done.
Like anyone else in their thirties pretending to be a carefree teenager in response to the growing promises of a bleaker tomorrow, I started listening to Weezer again, like nonstop. And I won’t lie, some of their work still holds up. It does, however, get tiring having to skip track after track just to find some of the good stuff when all of their albums have the same freaking title and literally look identical minus a different background color. How am I supposed to tell these apart?
Does Weezer just not care about the colorblind? Because finding ways of letting us know which of their albums suck isn’t exactly difficult.
I’ve seen the band donate signed guitars to charity and perform on benefit records—is it really too hard for them to spice up their album covers with different titles so I don’t have to sit through “Love is the Answer” again? Seriously, guys, Weezers II – XVII, or something—you know, like Zeppelin. Or does me being unable to properly run a litmus test in my chemistry lab without a partner not compare with the mission of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society?
I get it. Sometimes you want that consistency with the album artwork when you’re too afraid to take your sound in new and interesting directions, and I’m sure that helps fans know what they’re getting. But around 4.5% of the world’s population doesn’t know what they’re getting, and it’s like we don’t even matter to Rivers Cuomo. He could at least have the decency to wear a cowboy hat or something on the cover of one of these things, and I think he could totally pull it off, too!
I’ve even called half of their record labels, begging them to consider putting stickers on Weezer CDs with messages like “Warning: This is the One Where He Fetishizes About Half-Japanese Girls for Some Reason” on them. And every one of those assholes laughed at me, can you believe it?
Is this all part of Weezer’s plan to get roughly 350 million people worldwide to go to Target and unwittingly pick up what is known as the “Black album” by those with perfectly functional cone cells? Because I hope it’s not the case, and I do believe that they’ll come back to form with their next album.
And maybe it’ll be as good as the one where the four of them are standing on the cover, looking like a bunch of dorks. You know the one.