Tim Mosenfelder/Corbis

Who: Lead Singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Weezer

Spotlight: Cuomo’s first solo album, a compilation of unreleased home demos titled Alone - The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo , will be released on December, 18th. Alone features tracks spanning the artists entire career and includes early versions of songs that brought Weezer to prominence in the early ‘90s (such as the original geek-rock anthem, “Buddy Holly”), tracks from Weezer’s abandoned space themed rock opera/musical Songs from the Black Hole, and other previously unreleased tracks.

Geek Rap?: The resolutely upbeat pop/rock aesthetics of Weezer’s first album – starkly different from the gloomy tone that prevailed in popular music at the time – struck a chord with critics and music fans alike. Though he is known for establishing “geek-rock” as genre, Cuomo’s diverse influences and artistic aspirations extend beyond the sensibility that originally brought Weezer into the spotlight. On Alone, Cuomo demonstrates a fuller range of his interests than ever before – on a cover of Ice Cube’s “The Bomb,” he even raps.

The Unlikely Harvardian: It’s not your average rock star that applies to Harvard in the wake of releasing a multi-platinum album. As one of the tracks on Alone suggests, however, Cuomo’s Harvard aspirations coalesced almost as soon as stardom struck. In a song he wrote in 1995 called “Longtime Sunshine,” he sings: “Sometimes, I wanna go back to school / An East Coast college with some history.”

Soon after penning those lyrics, Cuomo was accepted to Harvard. His application included an essay expressing his dissatisfaction with the celebrity lifestyle. Several leaves of absence, a two-year vow of celibacy, and three albums later, Cuomo graduated with a degree in English in 2006.

Rockstar in the Yard: What’s life like for a campus celebrity? Not too glamorous, it turns out. In an interview with the Crimson, Cuomo maintained that almost no one recognized him - though he must have cut quite a figure on campus "with pretty long hair and a really long, bushy beard, glasses, walk[ing] with a cane." Also, as he found out soon after her arrived, apparently having a multi-platinum album to your name (not to mention the Connecticut All-State choir on your resume) isn’t enough to guarantee a successful choir audition.

On the Horizon: A new Weezer album is set to debut in April or May of 2008, and Cuomo is at work on a “multimedia project” that obsessively details the two years of his life leading up to the release of Weezer’s first album.

Listen to "Black Hole" on Cuomo's MySpace Page

Read Cuomo's list of Stuff I Liked in 2007 in the Harvard Crimson

Read an essay Cuomo wrote for a class at Harvard on Gawker