Ab major · Camelot 4B · 122 BPM
Buddy Holly
by Weezer
- 122
- BPM
- Ab major
- Key
- 4B
- Camelot
- 54
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Rivers Cuomo wrote "Buddy Holly" after his Weezer bandmates made fun of his friend from the Santa Monica College Choir. He originally planned to leave the song off the band's debut album, feeling it was "cheesy" and unrepresentative of the sound he was pursuing. Producer Ric Ocasek talked him out of that decision, telling him to record it anyway and that they could drop it later if he disliked the result. Bassist Matt Sharp recalled arriving at the studio to find pieces of paper with doodles reading "WE WANT BUDDY HOLLY."
DGC Records released the song on September 7, 1994, which would have been Buddy Holly's 58th birthday, as the second single from the Blue Album. The lyrics namecheck both Holly and actress Mary Tyler Moore. It reached number two on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart, along with number 12 in the United Kingdom and number six in Canada.
Spike Jonze directed the music video, filmed at Charlie Chaplin Studios in Hollywood over a single day. It portrayed the band performing at Arnold's Drive-In from Happy Days, with cast member Al Molinaro introducing them as "Kenosha, Wisconsin's own Weezer." The video won four awards at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards and gained further exposure when Microsoft included it on the Windows 95 installation CD-ROM, a deal the band members learned about only afterward.
Buddy Holly runs at 122 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.97 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 492 ms. It is in Ab major, Camelot 4B, which shares its notes with F minor and mixes cleanly with Db major and Eb major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.