The Top-10 Songs of All (My) Time, #5: “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer

Dig if you will a picture … me in 1994, home from Michigan State for summer vacation, and delivering pizzas for Village Inn Pizza. I’d just finished my 3rd year at State. I was feeling good because I had gotten my college and academic life back on track. ’91-’92 was a great freshman year.  ’92-’93 was the year I almost got myself kicked out of State. So ’93-’94 was the year I moved back into the dorms and prioritized studying. Also, that was the only way my parents would send me back to MSU and support me financially. In that ’93-’94 year, I changed my Major from Engineering to Communications and felt like, yes, I like this much better and I like the classes.

Kurt Cobain killed himself on April 10, 1994. And Weezer released their first studio album on May 10, 1994 – I had to look that up, because my Weezer story starts sometime that summer when the video for “The Sweater Song” debuted on MTV during 120 Minutes. The video for “The Sweater Song” was directed by Spike Jonze, who was just starting to make very cool, very different videos. This video was simple. Just the band, against a blue backdrop, playing to an empty theater. If you know the song, it starts with a barely audible conversation between two dudes referring to each other as “brah” (translation: bro or brother) and this band, Weezer, looked like the biggest nerds ever. Not only did the muted conversations sound like conversations lifted from every college kid’s actual conversations, the EXPLOSION of Rivers Cuomo’s guitar when it hits the chorus was incredible. Then, the cherry on top is during the final cacophony of sound at the end of the song there’s a lyric, again barely audible, that says, “good to see you lying there in your Superman skivvies…” and I was an instant Weezer fan. 

And this Blog isn’t even about “The Sweater Song.” Don’t worry. I’m getting to “Say It Ain’t So.”

I went directly to Believe in Music (breadcrumb for my Kentwood and Grand Rapids natives). I didn’t pass Go and didn’t collect $200 … went right there, bought the CD (the most boring, nerdy album cover ever, at the time, with four guys who did not look like rockstars), and decided, oh, this is my band. Went home and dubbed the CD to cassette so I could play it in my car. For you youngsters, this is what you did in 1994. Most cars didnt’t have CD players, yet, and my 1985 Ford Escort definitely didn’t, so we had a CD to play on our home hi-fi system, and a cassette for the car. 

Anyway, I dubbed the CD to cassette and went to work, delivering pizzas, with Weezer (a band I’d only known about for about 12 hours) as my driving-around soundtrack. 

Track 1. Boom. Right out of the gate, “My Name is Jonas” blew me away. Two songs later, “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” was the most rockin’ “emo” thing I’d ever heard.  Track 4. “Buddy Holly”.  Fun. Into “Undone – The Sweater Song” which sounded even better as a song than as a video. “Surf Wax America” made me ask, hey, is this band from California? Because every other band right now is from Seattle. Cool. And then … whoa!  I don’t think I have many other songs where I remember the exact moment in time that I heard it for the first time. But “Say It Ain’t So” came across my speakers while delivering a pizza to a warehouse right by the Kentwood Airport. It was a song about a kid with an alcoholic father and how a beer in a fridge made him sad about how alcoholism took his father from him. He wanted to fix things. He writes a letter. It’s deep. Heavy. Add to that one of my favorite musical tricks … slow then fast and quiet then loud with a bass line featured in the quiet, slow parts. And lead singer Rivers Cuomo’s voice that sounds a little off-key and sounds like something I can sing along to … put that all together and the song was perfection. 

Note 1:  My Dad is a recovering alcoholic and once he decided he was done with alcohol, he stopped and never, not once, in 45+ years, he’s NEVER had a drink. My Dad is inspiring. Strong. He’s helped many people because of his strength, including a friend of mine. So the song is NOT autobiographical, but it does capture how I would feel if my amazing, inspiring, and strong Dad hadn’t quit.

Note 2:  Yes, I know, Rivers wrote the song about his distant, absentee father and Rivers assumed alcoholism was the reason his birth father wasn’t around, but it was a misuderstanding … but this isn’t about that.

Digging into the other albums released in 1994, and knowing The Beastie Boys released Ill Communication also in May, when I say Weezer’s Blue album was the only thing I listened to all summer, it can’t be a fact – but I honestly don’t remember listening to anything else that summer other than Weezer. And then in the fall, too, when I went back up to MSU and was delivering pizzas there, too.

Note 3:  Delivering pizzas was really good money in the mid-90s because people tipped $1 or $2 on every pizza and most pizza delivery guys are lazy and because I hustled and drove recklessly, I could clear $100ish in cash on good, busy nights and I really liked having cash so I didn’t have to touch any of the money from my paycheck.

There was no Internet, but inside the CD sleeve was an address to write to if I wanted to be part of the Weezer Fan Club and get newsletters. And I did. I wish I’d kept those newsletters. It was so fun. It was my band. Until, of course, I got back to MSU in the fall and Weezer was kinda everyone’s band. But they were more “me” than most. It was the new “emo” and I really think it kicked off a new era of “emo” where rock music was “emo” and it wasn’t just “alternative” that cornered the market on “emo.” 

I guess I’m saying kids with t-shirts and lots of friends who liked to party could be “emo” and it wasn’t just for black-clothes- eye-liner wearing kids who liked The Cure, The Smiths, and Morrissey. 

Weezer hooked me. Their music defined me and became the soundtrack of my next 20+ years and still only rank 3rd behind The Beatles and The Beastie Boys on my favorite artists list.

So … “Say It Ain’t So” is #5 on my own personal top-10 songs of all time.

MY OTHER TOP-10 SONGS OF ALL (MY) TIME

#10 – 

#9 – “Der Komissar” by After the Fire

#8 – “Hey Ladies” by The Beastie Boys

#7 – “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye

#6 – “Losing My Religion” by R.E.M.