Weezer Turns the iHeartRadio Music Festival Into a ’90s Rock Revival With Surprise Remi Wolf Duet

Weezer Turns the iHeartRadio Music Festival Into a ’90s and 2000s Rock Revival With Surprise Remi Wolf Duet

Weezer packed more than three decades of alternative-rock history into a compact, hit-heavy performance at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, ripping through “Beverly Hills,” “Hash Pipe,” “Undone, The Sweater Song,” “Say It Ain’t So” and “Buddy Holly” before bringing out Remi Wolf for one of the night’s surprise collaborations.

The band performed Friday, Sept. 18, during the first night of the two-day festival at T-Mobile Arena. The Sept. 19 date attached to the full concert recording reflects its online publication date rather than the date of Weezer’s performance. The group shared the opening-night bill with an unusually broad collection of artists that included BTS, Cardi B, Kenny Chesney, Goo Goo Dolls and Zara Larsson.

Weezer Goes Straight for the Hits

With festival sets offering little room for deep cuts or extended detours, Weezer approached Las Vegas like a band fully aware of what the crowd came to hear. Rivers Cuomo, Brian Bell, Scott Shriner and Patrick Wilson built the performance almost entirely around songs that have survived well beyond their original eras, opening with the arena-sized guitar riff of “Beverly Hills,” moving into “Hash Pipe” and then reaching back to Weezer’s landmark 1994 self titled debut for “Undone – The Sweater Song.”

It was a remarkably compressed tour through the band’s catalog. Rather than attempting to represent every stage of Weezer’s career equally, the group leaned heavily on songs that have become permanent fixtures of alternative rock radio and streaming culture. That approach made sense at the iHeartRadio Music Festival, an event deliberately built around recognizable songs, cross genre programming and abbreviated performances rather than conventional headlining sets.

Remi Wolf Joins Weezer for “Go Away”

The biggest surprise arrived midway through the performance when Cuomo introduced singer-songwriter Remi Wolf for “Go Away,” Weezer’s duet from the band’s 2014 album Everything Will Be Alright in the End. Wolf stepped into the guest vocal role for the live performance, trading vocals with Cuomo and turning a song that might otherwise have been one of the less immediately obvious selections in a seven-song festival set into its major collaborative moment.

iHeartRadio subsequently singled out Wolf’s appearance as one of the standout surprises from the first night, confirming that she joined the band specifically for “Go Away.” The selection also gave the set something beyond a straightforward greatest-hits run. Surrounded by songs virtually guaranteed to be recognized within seconds, “Go Away” represented a different period of Weezer’s career and gave Wolf room to reinterpret a song originally recorded as a duet with Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino.

From “Say It Ain’t So” to “Buddy Holly”

Following Wolf’s appearance, Weezer returned directly to the material that transformed the band into one of the defining alternative-rock acts of the 1990s. “Say It Ain’t So” brought the set back to 1994’s Blue Album before the band launched into “Buddy Holly,” another song from the same record whose Spike Jonze-directed music video became inseparable from Weezer’s early identity.

More than three decades after the Blue Album’s release, the durability of those songs remains difficult to miss. Weezer can perform for a contemporary festival audience surrounded by some of the world’s largest current pop, hip-hop, country and K pop acts and still build the core of its performance around music released in 1994. That longevity was essentially the theme of the set, with iHeartRadio describing Weezer’s appearance as a career-spanning performance that transported the Las Vegas crowd through the 1990s and 2000s.

“Island in the Sun” Closes the Set

Rather than finishing with another distorted guitar anthem, Weezer closed with the comparatively relaxed “Island in the Sun,” the enduring 2001 single from the Green Album. The song provided a lighter ending after the heavier run through “Hash Pipe,” “Say It Ain’t So” and “Buddy Holly,” while completing a set that touched several of the most recognizable periods of Weezer’s catalog.

According to the full show recording, the performance ran approximately 26 minutes from the introduction through the band’s exit. Within that narrow festival window, Weezer managed seven songs, a surprise guest and material spanning from the Blue Album era through the 2010s.

Rivers Cuomo Had One More Band He Wanted to See: BTS

Cuomo’s final comments also produced one of the night’s more unexpected cross-generational moments. As Weezer prepared to leave the stage, Cuomo thanked the audience and Remi Wolf before turning his attention to another act on the night’s lineup, telling the crowd that he was excited to see BTS before signing off with a message of appreciation to Weezer’s fans.

BTS would eventually close the first night of the festival, putting one of alternative rock’s most durable bands and one of the biggest K-pop groups in the world on the same Las Vegas bill. It was an almost perfect illustration of what the iHeartRadio Music Festival has become. Instead of separating artists by genre, generation or traditional radio format, the festival deliberately puts them together, allowing Weezer to bring out Remi Wolf, Cuomo to publicly geek out over BTS and all three acts to occupy the same event without the combinations feeling particularly strange.

A Seven Song Snapshot of More Than 30 Years of Weezer

The final set consisted of “Beverly Hills,” “Hash Pipe,” “Undone – The Sweater Song,” “Go Away” with Remi Wolf, “Say It Ain’t So,” “Buddy Holly” and “Island in the Sun.” There were obvious songs Weezer could not squeeze into a set this short, but the performance was less about comprehensively documenting the band’s catalog than demonstrating how many of its songs remain instantly identifiable decades later.

The Blue Album material still landed, the 2000s singles still worked inside a massive arena, Remi Wolf gave the performance a contemporary surprise, and Cuomo ended the night talking about BTS rather than pretending rock music exists in a separate universe from modern pop. For a band more than 30 years removed from its debut album, Weezer did not need an elaborate retrospective. Seven songs in Las Vegas told most of the story.

The 2026 iHeartRadio Music Festival

The 2026 iHeartRadio Music Festival took place Sept. 18 and 19 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and was hosted by Ryan Seacrest. The broader lineup included BTS, Benson Boone, Cardi B, Ciara, Goo Goo Dolls, Kenny Chesney, Lainey Wilson, LE SSERAFIM, Major Lazer, Muse, Snoop Dogg, The Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer and Zara Larsson, along with a special performance by Stella Lefty.

The festival was broadcast through iHeartMedia radio stations across more than 150 markets, while Disney+ and Hulu served as official streaming destinations. iHeartMedia also released a festival highlights program on the streaming platforms beginning Oct. 1, extending the annual Las Vegas event well beyond the two nights inside T-Mobile Arena.

Sources & Further Reading

iHeartRadio — Weezer Reveals Surprise Guest During Las Vegas Set
https://news.iheart.com/featured/iheartradio-music-festival/content/2026-09-18-watch-weezer-reveal-surprise-guest-during-nostalgic-vegas-arena-set/

iHeartRadio — Five Things You Missed From Night One
https://www.iheart.com/content/2026-09-19-5-things-you-missed-from-night-1-of-the-2026-iheartradio-music-festival/

iHeartRadio — 2026 Festival Lineup and Information
https://www.iheart.com/music-festival/

iHeartMedia — 2026 iHeartRadio Music Festival Coverage
https://content.iheartmedia.com/taxonomy/term/6216

iHeartRadio — How to Watch and Listen to the 2026 Festival
https://www.iheart.com/content/2026-09-11-2026-iheartradio-music-festival-how-to-watch-listen/