Rivers Cuomo MBTI Personality Type
Personality
What personality type is Rivers Cuomo? Rivers Cuomo is an ISTJ personality type in MBTI, 9w1 - sp/so - 964 in Enneagram, RLOAI in Big 5, SLI in Socionics.
I agree with IDRLabs on this one. Rivers is an ISTJ--a quicky one sure (didn't he grow up in a commune?), but an ISTJ all the same. First off, his "spreadsheet method" screams Si-Te. It's a highly systematic, consistent way of generating ideas, and appeals enormously to how an ISTJ thinks and operates. His lyrical themes tend to be fairly concrete, often based on sensory memories that are pretty mundane but mean a lot to him personally (Si). At the same time, he's not as overtly sentimental/nostalgic as ISFJs and INFPs are. I think it's also worth noting that writing "heartfelt" music seems to be something that he learned how to do, rather than something that came to him naturally. He's talked about the fact that initially, when he started his musical journey, his main goal was to shred fast guitar solos. He diligently practiced every new flashy technique that he came across until he could master it, which is a very Si-Te approach. (Guitarists who use Ti and Se also tend to be quite technique-minded, although in a more improvisational, exploratory way that I don't see from Rivers.) It also seems pretty antithetical to how an INFP would approach an instrument. He claims to have taken up more "emotionally honest" songwriting after being introduced to alternative rock, although he admits that it took him some time to assimilate these styles (Fi development). As for the INFJ votes, I get that he might have tested as that type but I can't find much Ni at all. Rivers doesn't seem to have any kind of overarching concept for Weezer's progression as a band; rather, he seems to view their albums very individually and uses them as a way to play around with his lower Ne by honing in on a different genre/style for each (e.g. "this is the 80s pop covers album," "this is the hair metal album," etc).
Biography
Rivers Cuomo (born June 13, 1970) is an American musician best known as the lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter of the rock band Weezer. Raised in an ashram in Connecticut, Cuomo moved to Los Angeles at 18, where he played in several rock bands before founding Weezer in 1992. Burnt out after the success of Weezer's self-titled debut album, Cuomo enrolled at Harvard University, but dropped out to record Weezer's second album, Pinkerton (1996); he later re-enrolled and graduated in 2008. Though Pinkerton was later frequently cited among the best albums of the 1990s, it was initially a commercial and critical failure, pushing Cuomo's songwriting toward pop music.
