Hollywood is now in its third week of shutdown while the Writer’s Guild of America is engaged in a strike. As the strike rolls on, Weezer has become the latest group of musicians to post up alongside the picketers to perform an acoustic set.
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Frontman Rivers Cuomo, guitarist Brian Bell, and bassist Scott Shriner appeared at the Paramount Pictures lot to perform two of their biggest hits: “Buddy Holly” and “Beverly Hills.”
The latter song gave the performance at the film lot a little bit of a meta-edge with the lyrics: Look at all those movie stars / They’re all so beautiful and clean / When the housemaids scrub the floors / They get the spaces in between / I wanna live a life like that.
Check out a clip of the impromptu performance, below.
Last week, Imagine Dragons came out to perform for the picketers who are fighting for “compensation and equity structures” in the streaming age. The band performed “Whatever It Takes” and their 2012 mega-hit “Radioactive.”
It has been more than 15 years since the WGA went on strike. The strike has already pushed back multiple TV releases and film productions.
Along with Imagine Dragons and Weezer, who were both physically present at the protests, many other famous names have extended their support from afar including Larry David, Seth Myers, and John Mulaney.
Perpetual hitmaker Justin Tranter commented on the lack of unionization for songwriters. “We need to fight this fight and find a way,” he told Rolling Stone. “I don’t have the answer at this very moment, but an extreme change is needed. Songwriters literally can’t unionize, and without a union to support us, it would take every songwriter in the world to just agree we wouldn’t work.”
The statement continued, “There are amazing new songwriters I work with every week who have streams in the billions who need to drive Uber or do OnlyFans because they can’t pay their rent. The WGA is inspiring and amazing, and I hope it inspires the songwriting community that we shouldn’t be so afraid. If we all lock arms, we can make a change.”
Photo Credit: Ashley Osborne/The Oriel Company
