Weezer - Songs From The Black Hole

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• published: 12 Dec 2014
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1. Blast Off! 2. You Won’t Get With Me Tonight 3. Why Bother? 4. Maria’s Theme 5. Come To My Pod 6. This Is Not For Me 7. Tired of Sex 8. Superfriend 9. She’s Had A Girl 10. Good News! 11. Getting Up and Leaving 12. Now I Finally See 13. Getchoo 14. I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams 15. Waiting On You 16. No Other One 17. Devotion 18. What Is This I Find? 19. Longtime Sunshine Mix Created by SonicLoveNoize Act I begins with the piano intro to “Longtime Sunshine” hard edited into “Blast Off!”. Not only does this create an excellent leitmotif and introduction to the album but it solves the problem of the missing first beat of “Blast Off” (lost somewhere on an older demo presumably). Here we see the main protagonist Jonas embarking on a space-mission and discussing his woes to shipmates Wuan, Dondo and the android M1. Upon entering the scene, Dondo calls the ship’s cook—Jonas’s ex-flame Maria--an unflattering expletive, which instigates a conversation between Jonas and Maria contained in the lyrics of the following song. This becomes problematic in my reconstruction since we have two songs that occupy the same “narrative space” from two different tracklists: “Who You Callin Bitch” and “You Won’t Get With Me Tonight”. Since the later is a mainstay of the album and, in this author’s opinion, is one of the band’s best songs, we should give the song its prominent place. Here I’ve created a hard edit from the first half of “Who You Calling Bitch” directly into “You Won’t Get With Me Tonight” so there is little lyrical overlap. The channels of the song were switched so that the drums are predominantly panned to the left to match the previous songs. This segues directly into “Why Bother?”, which although was not present on any of the tracklists, it is common knowledge that it was a part of SFTBH. Here it is placed in the only logical position, as Jonas explains his hesitancy to be with Maria because of previous heartbreaks. “Maria’s Theme” is the combination of “Oh Jonas” and “Please Remember” with a softened fade-in from its usually clipped beginning, in which Jonas is beckoned by Maria and finally gives in to his own desires. Segued into the love scene of “Come To My Pod”, it is followed by Jonas’s sudden realization that this is not for him in the aptly-titled “This Is Not For Me”, which I have crossfaded into the beginning of the studio outtake version of “Tired of Sex” mimicking the demo arrangements. Act II fades in with the a capella arrangement of “Longtime Sunshine” (thought to be the “reprise” version found on the demo sequence) edited into “Superfriend” in which Jonas confides to his friend Laurel his romantic woes, who subsequently scorns him. Laurel is the “good girl”, in contrast to the "bad girl" Maria, and Jonas realizes he is smitten by his shipmate and confidant; unfortunately Laurel has friend-zoned him, halting his affection. Later, Maria gives birth to Jonas’s daughter as depicted in the following “She’s Had A Girl” and Jonas realizes he is trapped. Suddenly Wuan and Dondo enter the scene and announce that their spaceship has finally landed in “Good News!”. Next is my own creative decision to beef up the album by adding “Getting Up And Leaving”, a song not usually from Songs From The Black Hole. Yet it completely fits in with the themes of escapism in the opera, and when placed here, Jonas is literally leaving Maria and his newborn daughter (details otherwise ambiguous). Next is “Now I Finally See” in which Jonas realizes he wants to be with Laurel and tries to win her over. She denies him yet again (details of this are ambiguous in the opera) and Jonas laments in the rough tracking alternate take of “Getchoo” while likewise Laurel second-guesses herself in “I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams”. Act III opens with the last non-tracklist addition, the Pinkerton B-side “Waiting On You”, which was actually written for the unreleased SFTBH anyways. Here Maria cries out, waiting, wanting and hoping for Jonas’s return to her and their child. After Laurel’s rejection, Jonas has an epiphany that Maria, the “bad girl”, was the right girl for him all along in “No Other One” and the two lovers finally embrace and rejoice in “Devotion”. In a devastatingly dramatic turn, all expectations come crashing down when Jonas finds a used condom in “What Is This I Find?” Used by Maria and either Wuan or Dondo during Jonas’s absence, this fulfills his own prophesy from Act I—"Why bother? It’s gonna hurt me." At the conclusion of the rock opera, Jonas reiterates the reoccurring sentiment of escapism throughout Songs From The Black Hole in “Longtime Sunshine”, a metaphor for 'the great something' that Jonas is searching for, be it space travels or amorous ventures.