Weezer: It's Not, no it IS about Lost’s Hurley

It's a mystery almost as compelling as the entire run of the TV series Lost!

By Fred Mills

You can tell it's a slow news day when not only blogs but mainstream music media outlets like Billboard are jumping what's got to be pretty marginal stuff with equal vigor. The latter is reporting that the new Weezer album, due Sept. 14 on Epitaph and titled Hurley (as in, the character "Hurley" on Lost - see internet mock-up of proposed album art, above), was in fact not inspired by that show's Jorge Garcia but rather by Hurley International, a surf-skate company.

Billboard  and New York Magazine cite as proof a recent interview with Weezer guitarist Brian Bell about the origin of the album title. Bell is quoted as saying:

"The inspiration came from a surf company called Hurley, that was funding the record at the beginning of the recording process. And we actually did some sort of advertisement ... I don't even know how they're tied in so much, although, we got some clothes and we did a photo shoot where we're wearing these clothes, and I think we're selling these clothes in malls. So how that's tied in, I don't know. I think it's this whole like ... tying in different medias,and then using Hurley, the character from Lost, which I've never seen in my life, as our mascot almost, for this record, is somewhat postmodernistic maybe. I hope people don't look at it as too jokey. Cause it certainly comes across that way, without reading into it a little more deeply. That's it as far as the name and the album cover goes."

Then this morning New York Magazine turned around and revealed that after the quote circulated, Bell wound up posting a retraction on the band's website:

"Recently I did an interview in Denver where I was asked why we called the album Hurley. I mistakenly said that Hurley funded the album. I later found out that it wasn't true at all. Weezer paid for every penny of this recording. The reason the record is called "Hurley" is because Hurley (Jorge Garcia) is on the cover. We thought about leaving the record untitled for the fourth time, but that causes a lot of problems and he knew people would end up calling the record "Hurley" anyway. We got no money for calling the record "Hurley."

So there you have it. We can all rest easy now.