Say It Ain't So
by Weezer
- 76
- BPM
- Eb major
- Key
- 5B
- Camelot
- 64
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
When Rivers Cuomo started "Say It Ain't So", he had all the music finished and one line: "Say it ain't so." The rest came from a memory from high school. He came home, saw a bottle of beer in the refrigerator, and feared his mother and stepfather's marriage would end as his parents' had, because he believed his father's alcoholism ended that one.
Drummer Patrick Wilson helped with the writing. Cuomo asked him for a two-syllable word for refrigerator and Wilson answered "Icebox!" Cuomo said the first version was called "The Classic Rock Song" and had none of the ska beats. It was only strumming and sounded pretty lame. A second demo focused on the guitar and bass parts, inspired by Wax's "Hush" and a Pixies song. The chordal hammering in the intro came from Jimi Hendrix's "Axis: Bold as Love".
Weezer released it on May 15, 1995, as the third and final single from their 1994 debut album. Sophie Muller directed the video, shot at the house where the band rehearsed and recorded. It did less well than the two earlier videos by Spike Jonze, but the song still reached the top 10 of the Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Say It Ain't So runs at 76 BPM, the tempo of soul, trip-hop and half-time hip-hop. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3.16 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 789 ms. It is in Eb major, Camelot 5B, which shares its notes with C minor and mixes cleanly with Ab major and Bb major.
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