Rivers Cuomo & Co. are coming to town! Let’s warm welcome them! Have a sweet memory with this particular song?
“Say It Ain’t So” was released as the third and final single from Weezer’s 1994 The Blue Album. The song is a cathartic one for Rivers Cuomo, who takes out his family frustrations in the lyric. He wrote the music for the song and had the title, but didn’t know what the song would be about until he remembered an incident when he came home from high school and found a bottle of beer in the refrigerator belonging to his stepfather (“Somebody’s Heine’ is crowdin’ my icebox”).
Cuomo’s family had been hurt by alcohol abuse in the past, as his father was an alcoholic and left the family when Rivers was four. When Cuomo saw the beer in the fridge, he thought his stepfather was also going to end up leaving.
The line “Flip on the tele’, wrestle with Jimmy” is a reference to Cuomo’s brother, Jimmy. The other name mentioned in the song is Stephen (“This bottle of Stephen’s”), which refers to their stepfather, Stephen Kitts.
Bass player Matt Sharp sang the falsetto vocals on The Blue Album, which is probably most easily recognisable on this song. These were, oddly enough, the first notes Sharp sang in front of anyone.
The Blue Album itself reached number sixteen on the US 𝘉𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥 200, and was certified triple platinum in 1995. It remains Weezer’s best-selling album, having sold at least 3.3 million copies in the U.S. and over 15 million copies worldwide by 2009. In 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 294 on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The video up above via Live on Letterman, August 1995.
See you on 29 Nov at Peninsula Island, Nusa Dua, El Scorcho!
• Read also EVERYDAY I WRITE THE BOOK.
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Featured image via The Line of Best Fit.
