Weezer’s Album ‘Hurley’ Not Named After Beloved ‘Lost’ Character After All

Weezer’s Brian Bell revealed that the inspiration behind the band’s new album title was not Jorge Garcia’s character Hurley Reyes on Lost, although the actor’s smiling visage scored the album cover art. Instead, it was a cross-promotion with surf clothing company Hurley. We would have preferred continuing to think that the band was comprised of a bunch of really big Losties.

Video interview below of Bell breaking the bad news at the Mile High Music festival.

Says Bell, responding to the question “How did you get the title of your new album Hurley?”:

“The inspiration came from a surf company called Hurley, that was funding the record at the beginning of the recording process… 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 post-modernistic 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.”

This is a different story than what frontman Rivers Cuomo told Spinner earlier this month. “We struggled super hard trying to come up with an album title, trying to find some kind of phrase that summed up the whole aesthetic behind the album,” Cuomo said. “I was coming up with all kinds of stuff, but ultimately, we just went with some random word that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything.”

Well, at least they didn’t put a pair of board shorts on the cover of their album.

[Vulture]