Say It Ain't So

"Say It Ain't So", by Weezer, is part of their first album, Weezer, also known as The Blue Album. This and many of the other songs in the album were written by Rivers Cuomo and were inspired by many personal experiences from his past.




In the song, Cuomo talks about how alcoholism has torn his family apart. This changed how he perceived drinking in general. The song starts with Cuomo discovering an alcoholic drink in his fridge. "Somebody's Heine' / Is crowdin' my icebox / Somebody's cold one / Is givin' me chills," This line uses the theme of cold to try to connect an emotion to an event. It calls the drink a "cold one" and then describes how it gives the speaker, Cuomo, chills. The chills mentioned could be literally interpreted as the cold of the refrigerator (icebox), or as the chills that someone gets when the make a scary realization, in this case thinking one of his family members is an alcoholic.




"Say it ain't so / Your drug is a heartbreaker," Cuomo is expressing how alcohol is painful for him since it made his father and mother split up. Now that he thinks his step father is an alcoholic too, he is in disbelief.




Eventually Cuomo writes to his father and says, "Dear Daddy / I write you in spite of years of silence / You've cleaned up, found Jesus, things are good or so I hear / This bottle of Steven's awakens ancient feelings / Like father, stepfather," In this line there is a simile used to compa re Cuomo's step father to his father, in that he believes both are alcoholics. The line as a whole shows how Cuomo disconnected d with his father be a use of what he did and might now do the same with his step father without any other evidence.