I never really thought about getting a tattoo when I was 16, but if I did it probably would have been of the winged Weezer “W.”  After “The Blue Album” and Pinkerton, they were pretty much my guitar-playing Bible for the next seven or eight years.  I couldn’t even count the amount times that I rocked out to “Suzanne” on my worn Peavey amp, or to “The Good Life” during dorm room jam sessions.  The albums that came out after the band’s hiatus (1997–2000) were melodic and fun, but in my mind, never seemed as lyrically personal or musically unique as the first two discs.  The 2006 release Make Believe was overproduced, under-emotional, and musically bland.

I was happier, though, with Weezer’s latest effort, entitled Weezer, but known as “The Red Album.”  It’s still glossier and more digital than I’d like the band to sound (I’ll probably never kick my analog aesthetic), but there are some great songs on there, like the Queen-esque mega-song “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Theme),” and “Heart Songs,” which is a clever picture-in-picture continuation of “In the Garage.”

However, there is one thing that annoys me about the album: other Weezer members, aside from lead singer Rivers Cuomo, write and sing a couple of the band’s songs.  OK.  There are plenty of bands that share out the lyric-writing duties to great effect.  I’m not going to say that the Beatles should have let John or Paul do all the singing, or that The Band, The Who, The Cars, or the Eagles should have stuck with one lyricist.  But there are certain bands that are defined by their frontman.  Zeppelin.  Jimi.  The Doors.  You grow to trust their vocal delivery, the way they tell a story in a song, the unique poetic diction (Robert Plant, singing about Lord of the Rings in “The Battle of Evermore,” and sex in every other song, comes to mind).  A lot of Weezer fans feel the same way about Rivers Cuomo.

Rivers at the 2001 MTV Music Awards

It’s Rivers who looks just like Buddy Holly, comes undone, asks his hipster crush to go to the Green Day concert.  In that vein, the songs that Rivers writes on “The Red Album” bear his imprint.  Sure, all the band members sing on “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived,” but you can still tell that it’s got the Rivers Cuomo sound: part Beach Boys, part sincere acoustic serenade, part ironic emo symphony.  But songs like “Thought I Knew,” which was written by guitarist Brian Bell and “Automatic,” penned by drummer Pat Wilson, are just terrible.  As experimental as the album might be, it retains its Weezer-ness on the songs that Rivers wrote.  But when these two tracks come up on my iPod shuffle, it feels like getting carrot sticks on Halloween.  They just don’t fit in, and honestly, the singing—done by the respective band members—is pretty lackluster.

How does this kind of thing happen?  Is it because the lead singers start to feel guilty about the other guys never getting time in the limelight?  Do the other musicians, after many years of faithful drum breaks and bass lines, start to feel unappreciated?  “Come on, man, I wrote this song for my wife, and I promised her that I’d get it on the album…”  Don’t these impostor frontmen ever feel self-conscious that they might not live up to the performance of the normal lead singer, who in many cases, is the only band member that any of the fans know or care about?  It just seems like a waste of a track. Would a great shortstop let the right fielder play his position just because he was jonesin’ for some ground balls?

A friend and I rounded up a couple of songs like this from the 90s: Pearl Jam’s “Mankind,” sung by guitarist Stone Gossard; or Guns N’ Roses; “So Fine,” with bassist Duff McKagan on lead vocals. As you might expect, both songs are pretty bad.  “So Fine” was a tribute to punk rock pioneer Johnny Thunders.  While that’s a nice sentiment, there’s no reason Axl shouldn’t have handled the vocals (he actually does appear as the track starts, only to make way for Duff’s droll delivery). “Mankind” was one of PJ’s worst songs to date at that point, and, in my mind, ranks up there with the unlistenable spoken word track “Rats.”

Maybe I’m being too harsh?  Are there other bands with a venerated lead singer that have done this successfully?  I’d like to hear any thoughts on this one way or the other-