9. Weezer – Say It Ain’t So
At dawn, strapped into my Discman as I walk, bleary-eyed to work, the blue CD starts spinning. This is all very good.
And then the easy, rainy-day guitar (or is it sun-drenched?) and Rivers Cuomo’s gentle falsetto are easy on my early-morning mind.
“Oh yeah.
Alright.
Feels Good.
Inside”
It’s intimate, soft, and delightfully off-beat. It’s a bit like Undone (The Sweater Song), but there’s something darker building here.
“Somebody’s Heiney, is drowning my ice-box.
Somebody’s cold-one, is givin’ me chills.
Guess I’ll just close my eyes.”
I get the feeling it’s not all sweetness and light, and there’s a particular bong-head resonance I garner from the line:
“Somethin’ is bubblin’, behind my back. Bottle is ready, to blow.”
It’s catchy, cool.
And then this big, punchy chorus of fuzzed-up distortion comes roaring up from the deep and the heart-wrenching plea “Say it ain’t so! A-woah,oah!”
Wow! I was no longer bleary-eyed.
Wide awake, switched on, and then… Oh my God, that fucking unbelievable line and the key change:
“Like father, step-father,
The son is drowning in the flood!
Yeah! Yeah-yeah! Yeah-yeah!”
Goosebumps!
I fairly bounced into work, and there was no way any sticky carpets or crawling around in mountains of sickly-sweet, stinking movie-goer rubbish was going to bring me down from this high.
Please stay tuned for Part 5…
Haven’t seen this video since it came out. Watching it in conjunction with reading your comments, I had ideas for at least two if not three potentially heartbreaking and/or uplifting posts. If only I’d been quick enough to get them down on paper! Maybe I can reconstruct one later on and capture some of what I just felt. Liking these music posts of yours.