Rivers Cuomo

Rivers Cuomo ( KWOH-moh; born June 13, 1970) is an American musician and the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Weezer. Cuomo was born in New York City and raised in several Buddhist communities around the Northeastern United States until the age of 5, when his family settled in Pomfret, Connecticut. He played in several bands in Connecticut and California before forming Weezer in 1992. After the success of Weezer's debut, the Blue Album (1994), Cuomo enrolled at Harvard University, but dropped out after recording Weezer's second album, Pinkerton (1996). He re-enrolled and graduated in 2006. Though Pinkerton is now frequently cited among the best albums of the 1990s and has been certified platinum, it was initially a critical and commercial failure, pushing Cuomo's songwriting toward pop music for Weezer's next album, the Green Album (2001). Weezer has released more than a dozen albums since. Cuomo has released several compilations of demos, including Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2007) and Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2008), and has released thousands of home recordings on his website. He has collaborated with artists including Hayley Williams, B.O.B., AJR, Todd Rundgren and Panic! at the Disco. With the American songwriter Scott Murphy, Cuomo has released two Japanese-language albums as Scott & Rivers.