"Dope Nose" is "a bunch of garbage lyrics," written in a tequila/Ritalin haze (yes, really).
And while the whole lyric sheet is bizarre, the main offender here is a gay
slur in the second verse. Though the early 2000's were a different time (the first
state to legalize gay marriage, Massachusetts, wouldn’t do so until '05), the slur didn’t need to be included then and absolutely should
be removed now. That Weezer continued to perform “Dope Nose," slur included, as
late as 2015 is a head-shaker.
If "Dope Nose" were a baseball player we'd say it has plus power but zero brains. The track bops, despite itself. "Dope Nose" is the career minor leaguer who shows up to the ballpark still hungover, who strikes out two-thirds of the time but still mashes enough dingers to score an occasional groupie. After floundering for a few years as a demo, Weezer called "Dope Nose" up to the Big Leagues, putting it second on their 2002 album, Maladroit. Many hailed the album as Weezer's best since Pinkerton.
The song starts with some great ooh-oohs that I unironically love (and that might be the part of this lyric sheet):
Whoa-oh-oh
Whoa-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh
Then Rivers starts tossing out garbage. Despite his claim the words mean nothing, "Dope Nose" seems to form a cohesive narrative about, shall we say, Better Living Through Chemistry.1 With that in mind, we'll try to arrange the song's nonsense around the ideas of escapism and mild drug use.
Take me
So we've set up that our narrator is under a lot of pressure. They don't have "debt," they have "debts." Plural. Much worse. They've also got a little weed, a little time, and a little need for escape. The math practically does itself.
Then comes a gobbledygook refrain. Individually, each word has meaning. But strung together, they verge on incoherence. How exactly does one, and I quote, "bust ryhmes real slow?"
I'll appear, slap
And now on to the prime offender. The reason Weezer hasn't played "Dope Nose" for years and probably won't anytime soon. If the band was attempting to make some larger social statement with these lyrics, we could have a discussion about including a slur. Green Day's "American Idiot" comes to mind. But "Dope Nose" is no "American Idiot." Hell, it's not even "All by Myself." By design, "Dope Nose" makes no point whatsoever. The slur is flippant and unnecessary. This verse makes so little sense, that there's nothing to renovate; we have to demolish and rebuild.
And that's it. "Dope Nose" is a mess, y'all. It's a one-tool player; a big-cussing, unlikable SOB that somehow made the Big Leagues. One could argue that a lot of prospects need time to develop. Remember, all-time strikeouts king Nolan Ryan just *barely* pitched out of his first inning. I doubt any amount of seasoning would make “Dope Nose" an All-Star, though. Even scrubbed clean, the song is thoroughly "meh." But by removing slurs and tightening the narrative, we can at least nudge “Dope Nose” into positive WAR.2
Dope Nose
Lyrics by Rivers Cuomo
Edits by Keith Good
Whoa-oh-oh
Whoa-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh
1 Yes, I know there's a much better link to put on this text, that Queens of the Stone Age actually has a song called, "Better Living Through Chemistry," but don't the lyrics to "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" just *fit*?↩
2 This parade of baseball references brought to you by Joe Posnanski's phenomenal book, The Baseball 100. A ranking of the 100 best baseball players of all time, I just finished reading it and already I can't wait to read it again.↩
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