Weezer
Other Stage, Saturday June 28, 2025
“Wow!” exclaims Rivers Cuomo, gazing out from the Other Stage to a sea of love on a baking hot Saturday afternoon. “Last time we played here was 1995 – looks kinda the same! Maybe they’ll have us back in another 30 years…”
The Weezer singer-guitarist would be 85 by then, but stranger things have happened. Such as, the fact of his band’s ongoing existence, having survived the centrifugal rush of fame in the post-Nevermind MTV-stoked alternative rock boom. Back then, Weezer’s gift for wry, punchy powerpop hardly seemed a durable formula for success amid the grunge heavyweights. Yet here is Cuomo, still familiar as the inscrutable bespectacled guy from those early Spike Jonze videos, alongside guitarist Brian Bell, drummer Patrick Wilson and bassist Scott Shriner, opening up with Hash Pipe, a quintessential Weezer anti-rock rock anthem. Cue widespread glee in the large crowd. “Are you ready for Weezertime?” asks Rivers.
Perhaps one reason Weezer remain so beloved is their evident comfort with the songs which initially made them very famous. Although they have 15 albums to their name, this set is dominated by selections for 1994’s eponymous ‘Blue Album’, all of which have aged remarkably well, rooted as they are in timeless virtues of wit, crunching melody and relatability. No One Else finds the big screens focusing on a contingent of kids far too young to have been first-gen fans making hand shapes of the Weezer ‘W’ logo. Their parents are doubtless among those throwing evil hands during Cuomo’s cool sustain guitar solo in Island In The Sun, or cheering when Brian straps on his Gibson Explorer for Say It Ain’t So.
They close, inevitably, with Buddy Holly, the song which started it all. It’s no longer just kids throwing the Weezer ‘W’, and at the close Cuomo returns the favour, hopping around the stage with glee and then lining up his bandmates for a bow. On a Glastonbury weekend heavily infused with ’90s nostalgia, Weezer’s was as warmly felt and received as any.
Weezer Glastonbury 2025 Setlist:
Hash Pipe
My Name Is Jonas
Dope Nose/Troublemaker
No One Else
Perfect Situation
Surf Wax America
Undone – The Sweater Song
Island In The Sun
Holiday
3 / 3
Beverly Hills
Why Bother?
You Gave Your Love To Me Softly
Pork And Beans
The Good Life
Say It Ain’t So
Buddy Holly
Follow all of MOJO’s Glastonbury 2025’s coverage HERE!
Photo: Weezer, Oslo, Norway, June 26, 2025 (Credit: Rune Hellestad/Corbis/Getty Images)