Weezer YouTube Invasion

The Weezer YouTube Invasion was a series of videos made in 2010 as a collaboration between Weezer and several popular YouTubers in order to promote the album Hurley.

Overview

“We always like to think of new ways to get the word out to people when we have a new record,” lead singer Rivers Cuomo told us. “There’s something about the YouTube people – they have a similar energy to what we’re doing… [I feel like] there’s a lot of creativity there. And they’re doing it for the right reasons… They’ve pulled their audiences the hard way,”.

- Rivers Cuomo, Mashable, September 2010^[1]

Ben Patterson, founder of digital marketing company DashGo Inc. (of which Weezer is a client of), came up with the idea for the YouTube Invasion after attending VidCon 2010 and seeing the popularity YouTubers at the event had.^[2] The idea was envisioned as the opposite of the Pork and Beans music video: instead of bringing YouTubers to a Weezer video, Weezer would be brought to the YouTuber's videos. The YouTubers were then chosen through suggestions from fans,^[3] co-workers and friends.^[2] In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Rivers Cuomo said "We always enjoy when we get asked to do things outside our comfort zone, we can't fall back on our musical abilities".^[4]

Six days before shooting was set to start,^[2] the YouTubers were contacted to let them know that Weezer was interested in participating in a video that was to be completely written and edited by the YouTuber with no input from the band; the only requirement was for all the videos to somehow promote or link to the Hurley album. The band had so little involvement in the creation of the videos that they didn't even see them until the day they were uploaded.

Filming took place over a two day period in late August 2010 at a studio in Los Angeles, California and each YouTuber had only 30 minutes to film with the band.^[4] Most of the videos were then released on September 13, 2010, the day before Hurley was released.

List of YouTubers involved

Ray Willam Johnson - "Ray It Ain't So"
Fred - "Fred and Weezer Go to the Moon"
schmoyoho - "Auto-Tune the News #13: driving. stripping. swinging. (ft. Weezer)"
The Key of Awesome - "Anastasia! (ft Weezer): The Key of Awesome #28"
Dave Days - "Rock Paper Scissors Shoot with Weezer!"
Onision - "DANGER MEETS WEEZER!!!"
Mystery Guitar Man - "Weezer Frames"
StSanders - "Weezer plays 'Kiss Shreds' - Singalong"
HotForWords - "I spanked Weezer!"
Annoying Orange - "Annoying Orange Wazzup 3: Bonsai Tree"
Tay Zonday - "'CHAOS' SONG BY TAY ZONDAY FEAT. WEEZER!"
MagicHugs - "How To Be Tight (Episode 3)"
USofAnderson - "USofAnderson.com: Making MEMORIES with WEEZER"

While channels Keep The Heat and Cyr are listed in certain places as being apart of the invasion,^[5] Keep The Heat's video doesn't contain an appearance by the band, instead featuring a Wuggie cameo and whether or not Cyr ever uploaded a video for the invasion is unknown.

Cuomo claimed in an interview that the video by MagicHugs was his favorite due to how different it was compared to other interviews.^[4] Scott Blair from MagicHugs was later involved with the first Weezer Cruise.

An interview between Tay Zonday and Brian Bell was posted by the official Weezer YouTube channel as well as a behind the scenes video and a deleted scene from the schmoyoho video. Weezer Webisode #37 also includes behind-the-scenes footage of multiple videos. MagicHugs also included outtakes from their interview in their annual Fun Reel.

Reception

Within 24 hours, four of the videos had made it into the Top 20 chart and all the videos combined had over 5 million views.^[6] As of February 2023, the videos have over a combined 43 million views.