Buddy Holly (song) - Song Development

Song Development

Rivers Cuomo stated in one of his MySpace blogs from 2006 that he remembers questioning whether or not to include this song on Weezer. He almost kept it off the final track list, but encouragement from producer Ric Ocasek soon changed his mind. In the book River's Edge, Ocasek is quoted as saying, "I remember at one point he was hesitant to do 'Buddy Holly' and I was like, 'Rivers, we can talk about it. Do it anyway, and if you don't like it when it's done, we won't use it. But I think you should try. You did write it and it is a great song.'" Cuomo said that he felt the song was "too cheesy" and didn't know if the song represented the sound he was going for with the band's music. Matt Sharp recalls:

...Ric said we'd be stupid to leave it off the album. We'd come into the studio in the morning and find little pieces of paper with doodles on them: WE WANT BUDDY HOLLY.

An early demo of "Buddy Holly" recorded by Cuomo in 1993 has a different feel, as the song is played at a much slower tempo than the version that appears on the album. This version appeared on Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo. The liner notes for Alone explain that the chorus, in its most primitive form, originally was sung as: "Oo-wee-oo you look just like Ginger Rogers/Oh, oh, I move just like Fred Astaire," the rest of the chorus the way it appears even in the Blue Album version.