About the Weezer Favorites songbook series:
I’m a huge Weezer fan. What I love even more than listening to Weezer is arranging their songs for the piano in a way that stays true to the originals, but keeps them playable for intermediate level pianists. This has been a “heart songs” project and I’m sure there will eventually be more volumes. If you’re looking for Easy Weezer Favorites (arrangements for easy piano) I’ve got those too!
A couple of notes about this series:
I have omitted all of my arrangements of the songs from the Teal album. I love Teal, but wanted to stick to Weezer’s original stuff.
I tried to represent a bit of everything, the old, the new, the popular, the deeper cuts. These volumes are by no means exhaustive, but the series will undoubtedly continue to grow.
🎸 About Weezer
Weezer is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1992, consisting of members Rivers Cuomo, Patrick Wilson, Scott Shriner, and Brian Bell. They have achieved significant success, selling over 10 million albums in the US and more than 35 million worldwide.
Their career includes notable albums such as the self-titled “Blue Album” in 1994, which was a multiplatinum success, and “Pinkerton” in 1996, which initially had mixed reviews but later gained critical acclaim. The band went on hiatus after “Pinkerton” and returned in 2001 with the “Green Album,” featuring a more pop sound and achieving commercial success. Bassist changes occurred during this period.
Weezer continued to release albums like “Maladroit” (2002) with a hard-rock sound and “Make Believe” (2005) with mixed reviews but a chart-topping single, “Beverly Hills.” In 2008, they released the “Red Album” with the hit single “Pork and Beans.” Subsequent albums, “Raditude” (2009) and “Hurley” (2010), had mixed reviews, but are valuable albums in the Weezer ouevre.
They returned to a rock style reminiscent of their 90s sound with “Everything Will Be Alright in the End” (2014) and the “White Album” (2016). “Pacific Daydream” (2017) featured a more mainstream pop sound, and in 2019, they released a covers album (the Teal Album) followed by the “Black Album.”
In 2021, Weezer released “OK Human,” featuring an orchestral pop sound, which received critical acclaim, and “Van Weezer,” inspired by hard rock. In 2022, they released a series of EPs based on the four seasons.
🎶 Weezer Favorites: Volume 5 Songbook
The following songs are included in the Weezer Favorites: Volume 5 songbook.
These are all available as separate singles, but you get the most value by purchasing the whole collection. All of these arrangements are appropriate for intermediates and up.
- A Little Bit of Love
- Beginning of the End
- California Kids
- Crab
- Do You Wanna Get High?
- Foolish Father
- High as a Kite
- Precious Metal Girl
- This Is Such a Pity
- We Are All On Drugs
🎹 Watch a performance of the entire volume:
⭐ Featured Favorites
Let’s dive deeper with some more details about a few of my personal favorites from Weezer Favorites: Volume 5 songbook.
1. “High as a Kite” (2019)
The third track and third single from The Black Album. Hands down my favorite Weezer video ever:
In an interview with Zane Lowe, Rivers Cuomo revealed that the song is about his mixed feelings regarding escapism, drawing a comparison to the song “Surf Wax America” in terms of its theme. The verse melody of the song appears to have been repurposed from “When We Were Young,” a track originally intended for the album “Everything Will Be Alright in the End.” Additionally, music journalist Scott Heisel noted that the bass chord progression underwent changes before the song’s release.
The music video for the song, directed by Nathan Presley, parodies the children’s television show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
🔎 Sheet music sneak peek:
2. “California Kids” (2016)
The lead track off of The White Album:
“California Kids” is a song co-written by Rivers Cuomo and songwriter Dan Wilson, known for his involvement with the band Semisonic. Wilson had previously collaborated with Cuomo on the song “Ruling Me” from Weezer’s 2010 album, “Hurley.” The inspiration for the phrase “California kids” came from Cuomo’s experiences on the Santa Barbara beach with his family, where he realized how different his children’s upbringing in California was compared to his own on the East Coast in Connecticut.
In early 2015, Cuomo mentioned the possibility of an English version of “California” being considered for a TV series called “DeTour,” loosely based on his life and pitched by Steve Franks, the creator of “Psych,” for Fox in 2015. Although the show was not picked up and never aired, the leaked pilot episode in 2023 featured the song being performed acoustically by the series protagonist, Michael Sturges, played by Ben Aldridge.
“California Kids” was the only song selected from a pool of 235 demos that Cuomo and producer Jake Sinclair reviewed at the beginning of 2015 while working on what would become The White Album. The song served as the inspiration for the album’s “beach/nautical theme.” The lyrics revolve around a group of “heroic slackers,” as described in the album’s iTunes description.
In an accidental release, “California Kids” became available for streaming on Apple Music in the US on February 25, 2016, and was quickly shared among fans before being taken down by Apple.
A live and acoustic performance of “California Kids” was included in the band’s Spotify Sessions EP in 2016.
🔎 Sheet music sneak peek:
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3. “Beginning of the End” (2021)
“Beginning of the End” is a reworked version of the song “Rock and Roll Cockroach,” featuring a bridge adapted from the chorus of “Volunteers.” Originally, it was intended for the album Van Weezer, as revealed in a leaked review of the album in June 2020. In August, Rivers Cuomo hinted at a new music video for the song on the Riverchat platform, and it was later confirmed to be “Beginning of the End.” The song was released alongside its music video on August 14 as “Beginning of the End (Wyld Stallyns Edit),” part of the Bill & Ted Face the Music soundtrack.
Notably, musician Billy Joel is credited as a writer on “Beginning of the End,” which Cuomo clarified was due to a clearance requirement. The song contains an interpolation of Joel’s “The Longest Time.” Jonathan Leahy, the music supervisor for Bill & Ted Face the Music, was drawn to the song when he heard the lyric “Watch us brush off the dust/ In heavy metal we trust” and the epic guitar solo, leading to its inclusion in the film.
🔎 Sheet music sneak peek:
4. “We Are All on Drugs” (2005)
“We Are All on Drugs” was initially demoed acoustically and recorded directly onto Rivers Cuomo’s laptop in June 2003 at Weezer’s rented office space. It continued to be demoed throughout 2003 and was part of pre-production for the album “Make Believe.” Initial pressings of the album contained an incorrect mix of the song, featuring different lyrics during the bridge. The band later corrected this mistake on subsequent pressings of the album and released the corrected version as the album’s second single.
There is also a censored version of the song called “We Are All In Love,” mainly used for airings of the video on stations that objected to the drug reference. Pat Wilson suggested the censored title and initially wanted to call it “We Are All on Hugs.”
In an interview, Rivers Cuomo explained that the song should not be taken literally and that it’s more about the addiction to stimulation, whether through music or other means, rather than drugs.
To create a quick video to promote the song, footage from a 1985 video for the song “Fear No Evil” by the heavy metal band Grim Reaper was hastily edited together. However, a proper video was later shot, featuring heavy use of green-screen effects.
The song was covered by the Los Angeles pop metal/rock band Baba Yaga (formerly Skinmask) and released as their debut single in 2020. Weezer members Scott Shriner and Brian Bell made guest appearances in the video for this cover version.
🔎 Sheet music sneak peek:
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5. “A Little Bit of Love” (2022)
The lead single from SZNZ: Spring:
“A Little Bit of Love” by Weezer is a song that Rivers Cuomo wrote with the intention of creating an optimistic and uplifting track to cheer up his mother, who had experienced challenging times in her life. The song was performed acoustically by Rivers Cuomo at a Weezer concert in 2023.
The song’s existence was first hinted at through a Google spreadsheet shared by Rivers Cuomo on his Discord channel and on Riverpedia. This spreadsheet outlined various concepts for Weezer’s upcoming album series SZNZ, with “A Little Bit of Love” listed as the lead single for the Spring segment. Cuomo later confirmed the song’s position as the lead single in February 2022.
Teasers of the song were shared, including a ten-second clip on Discord and a video on TikTok. The official Weezer YouTube channel also uploaded a snippet of the song titled “Before you know it Spring will be here.”
The song was officially announced on March 11, 2022, along with the announcement of the SZNZ project, and was set to be released on March 16. Additional clips of the song were accidentally used in Weezle puzzles before being removed.
Weezer performed “A Little Bit of Love” live for the first time on the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! on March 21, 2022.
🔎 Sheet music sneak peek:
 - Easy/images/Cover--bitoflove-EZ-MN.png)
 - Intermediate/images/Cover--bitoflove-INT-MN.png)
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 - Easy/images/Cover--crab-EZ-MN.png)
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