Straight from Rivers Cuomo, the real song meanings
>>buddy holly
"it's about a particular girl i knew... it's about my commitment to her... our relationship... and, er, my willingness to defend her. it's very platonic. not a romantic thing at all."
>>el scorcho
"It's so hard to talk about this stuff without making myself sound like a complete asshole, which I suppose I am. Well, I suppose that halfway through writing the album, I started to realize or become aware of a pattern in my life that I seem to be having a lot of disastrous encounters with half Japanese girls."
>>the good life
"But here's where I run into that problem, where when I talk about it, I just feel like I'm selling the whole thing short and I feel like if you just listen to the song, you'll probably get a much better understanding of what my life was really like at that time. But I can try and describe what was going on. I had been completely out of the spotlight for eight months maybe and it was very cold. My leg hurt a lot. And I didn't have any friends where I was. I didn't have any girlfriends, especially. Probably hadn't even really talked to girls in a long, long time. And I was becoming really frustrated with that hermit's life I was leading, the ascetic life. And I think I was starting to become frustrated with my whole dream about purifying myself and trying to live like a monk or an intellectual and going to school and holding out for this perfect, ideal woman. And I was really frustrated and lonely. And so I wrote that song. And I started to turn around and come back the other way."
>>holiday
"written in a sudden burst of confidence and optimism right after we got a record deal. those positive emotions have since dissipated - along with out cash advances - but i still like the songs."
>>in the garage
"written in a sudden burst of confidence and optimism right after we got a record deal. those positive emotions have since dissipated - along with out cash advances - but i still like the songs."
>>my name is jonas
"...explains how 'the plan' is reaming is all, especially my brother. It's a good introduction to the album."
>>no one else
"...the jealous-obsessive asshole in me freaking out on my girlfriend."
>>only in dreams
"about being in love at a distance."
>>pink triangle
"I had a really intense crush on a girl and then I dreamed about her all through the fall semester. And then I found out she was a lesbian." ..... "That [pink triangle] was about a random girl. But really, it was someone I never even talked to. The actual girl isn't so important. It's more what was going on in my mind, this ideal that I was dreaming of. The good old-fashioned girl, the sweet and floral print. I never actually talked to any of these girls until the end of the record. And then when she became real, the whole thing fell apart."
>>say it ain't so
"it's such a complicated story, way too complex to write a song about. i should never have done it. i was really afraid of alcohol at the time. i didn't drink till I was 21, not even a sip. i was petrified of alcohol. "say it ain't so" was about when i was 16. i opened up the refrigerator and i saw a can of beer. all of a sudden i made the connection that my step-father was leaving...because my father started drinking when he left my mother."
>>surf wax america
"...a total sarcastic call to hedonism, so sing along, drink and be merry. I hate drinking and only do so when I absolutely have to (which, in these days, seems to be quite often)."
>>the world has turned and left me here
"...the same asshole [reference to "no one else"] wondering why she's gone."
>>tired of sex
"'Tired of Sex,'" you're wrong [laughs]. That's the oldest song on the album. I think it's a good starting point too, because that's when I'm saying that I want to rid myself of the rock life. I want to find the ideal woman and get married. It's a good starting point."
>>undone - the sweater song
"...the feeling you get when the train stops and the little guy comes knockin' on your door. It was supposed to be a sad song, but everyone thinks it's hilarious."
>>dope nose
Rivers said that he wrote this song first thing in the morning under the influence of tequila and ritalin. Also: "'Dope Nose,' as far as I can tell, has no meaning whatsoever. [It came from] just kind of writing random lyrics," Cuomo says. It's definitely not about drugs, as the title might imply. "It's kind of weird that we're singing a song about drugs all the time, 'cause we're not really a druggie band, and we don't have any political stance about it. It's just kind of random drug references that we don't really mean."
>>hash pipe
it's not actually about drugs. It's written from a perspective of a transvestite prostitute. He wrote this song along with Dope Nose, under the cloudy influence of tequila and ritalin.
