Rivers Cuomo

Rivers Cuomo (born June 13, 1970) is an American musician, lead singer, lead guitarist and principal songwriter of the rock band Weezer. Born in New York, he grew up in several Buddhist communities in the northeastern United States until age five, when his family settled in Pomfret, Connecticut. He played in several bands in Connecticut and California before founding Weezer in 1992.

After the success of Weezer's debut album, the Blue Album (1994), Cuomo enrolled at Harvard University, which he left after recording Weezer's second album, Pinkerton (1996). He later re-enrolled and graduated in 2006. Although Pinkerton is now often cited among the best albums of the 1990s and has been certified platinum, it was initially a critical and commercial failure, which pushed Cuomo toward more pop-oriented songwriting for Weezer's next album, the Green Album (2001). Weezer has since released more than a dozen albums.

Cuomo has released several collections of demos, including Alone (2007) and Alone II (2008), and has posted thousands of personal recordings on his website. He has collaborated with artists such as Hayley Williams, B.o.B, AJR, Todd Rundgren and Panic! at the Disco. With American songwriter Scott Murphy, he released two Japanese-language albums under the name Scott & Rivers.