"The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)" is a song released as an iTunes single from American alternative rock band Weezer's sixth album, Weezer (2008). The song bears a resemblance to the Shaker song "Simple Gifts" hence the "(Variations on a Shaker Hymn)" in the title. According to lead vocalist and writer Rivers Cuomo, "The Greatest Man" has 11 different themes, including rapping and imitations of other bands such as Nirvana and Aerosmith (both of whom also recorded for Weezer's then-label Geffen Records at one point).
This song received favorable critical reviews. After being announced as the third single, a music video was also announced; however, this never materialized and instead the song was featured in a film directed by Warren Miller.
Read more about The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations On A Shaker Hymn): Recording and Inspiration, Composition, Critical Reception, Music Video and Appearances in Other Media, Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words greatest, man, lived and/or shaker:
“Vashtar: So it’s finished. A structure to house one man and the greatest treasure of all time.
Senta: And a structure that will last for all time.
Vashtar: Only history will tell that.
Senta: Sire, will he not be remembered?
Vashtar: Yes, he’ll be remembered. The pyramid’ll keep his memory alive. In that he built better than he knew.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Though there were numerous vessels at this great distance in the horizon on every side, yet the vast spaces between them, like the spaces between the stars,—far as they were distant from us, so were they from one another,—nay, some were twice as far from each other as from us,—impressed us with a sense of the immensity of the ocean, the “unfruitful ocean,” as it has been called, and we could see what proportion man and his works bear to the globe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a sort of proverb in the country, that they always sent the devil to market.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)