The album also features more musical experimentation in comparison to their previous efforts, especially shown in such songs as "Dreamin'", "The Angel and The One", and "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived".

Two commercial singles were released from the album—"Pork and Beans" and "Troublemaker"—both becoming relatively successful modern rock hits.

[7] Frontman Rivers Cuomo returned to Harvard University to complete his education; he graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

[9] The wedding was held at a secluded beach on Paradise Cove in Malibu and was attended by over a hundred people, including six of the seven members who played in Weezer (former bassist Mikey Welsh was not in attendance) as well as notables Justin Fisher, Kevin Ridel and Rick Rubin.

[12] Also during this time, Bell formed a new side-band called The Relationship[13] while Wilson started work on material for the next Special Goodness album.

[23] Cuomo consciously strived to write less traditionally-structured songs, breaking away from the "verse-chorus--verse-chorus-bridge" structure that was present on past albums.

"Troublemaker", which was considered for the first single, introduces the theme of nostalgia for the album, with Cuomo "reliving his lost youth".

[25] "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)" is a track that includes piano, police sirens, rapped vocals and Cuomo singing in falsetto.

"[27] "Pork and Beans", the album's third track and first single, was written by Cuomo as a reaction to a meeting with Geffen where the band was told it needed to record more-commercial material.

[28] "Heart Songs" is about all the artists and records that have influenced Cuomo from Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" when he was 5 years old to Nirvana's Nevermind (1991) in his early 20s.

[29] The song misidentifies the cover of "I Think We're Alone Now" as being by Debbie Gibson instead of Tiffany, an error that was brought to Cuomo's attention while recording.

[30] Cuomo's childhood friend Adam Orth commented on the autobiographical element of the lyrics for "Everybody Get Dangerous".

[31] "Dreamin'" was formerly known as "Daydreamer" and was described in the liner notes to Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo as an "epic, 6-minute, symphonic type of art song.

"[32] "This is the Way", featured on Alone, was written as a more straightforward counterpart, and was originally selected by the band to be recorded for the Weezer album, but Cuomo persuaded the others to go with "Dreamin'" instead.

It's a big rock tune but it's kinda got a vibe to it and the lyrics are just about me wanting to give as much love as I can to my family..."[33] "The Angel and the One" serves as the album's closer.

[36] It features the band members Bell, Wilson, Cuomo and Shriner in various outfits standing left to right in front of a red backdrop, and is in a manner similar to their debut and 2001 album.

"We had a whole 'nother set of photographs that we wanted to be the cover and nothing that we were looking at ever matched up to what we felt that album sounded like and represents for us.

He [the art director] put the red background behind that, and that's what felt like the strongest image that matched how we feel the album sounds."

While many tend to assume that most Weezer material was scribed by Cuomo, Shriner insists that, "We all wrote music on the record.

[45] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic gave the album a positive review of 4+1⁄2 stars out of five calling the album, "A cheerfully restless record, one where all the parts don't fit and it's better because of it, as it has a wild, willing personality, suggesting that Weezer is comfortable as a band in a way they never quite have been before.

"[51] Los Angeles Times gave it a score of three-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "a rush, starting with a sustained, four-song soliloquy on pop music's allure.

"[50] Among the negative reviews, Tiny Mix Tapes called the album "a sad portrait of a band that has been totally destroyed by fame and the pressures that come along with it,"[57] and The A.V.

"[47] Pitchfork gave the record 4.7/10, lamenting that "like the YouTube culture the 'Pork and Beans' video depicts so well, the song-- and this album-- relies on a high quantity of short-lived pretty good ideas to distract from a shortage of great ones.

They also wrote: "The experiments pay off, and reflect Weezer's desire to constantly attempt new things as well as their refusal to fall back on their past success as a crutch.