Rivers Cuomo (born June 13, 1970) is an American musician best known as the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Weezer. Cuomo was born in New York City and raised in several Buddhist communities in the northeastern U.S. until the age of 10 when his family settled in Connecticut. He played in several bands in Connecticut and California before forming Weezer in 1992.
After the success of Weezer's debut, the Blue Album (1994), Cuomo enrolled at Harvard University, but dropped out after recording Weezer's second album, Pinkerton (1996). He later re-enrolled and graduated in 2006. Though Pinkerton is now frequently cited among the best albums of the 1990s and has been certified platinum, it was initially a commercial and critical failure, pushing Cuomo's songwriting toward pop music for Weezer's next album, the Green Album (2001). Weezer has released more than a dozen albums since.