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Listen! Rivers Cuomo - I Was Made For You

Preview one of the tracks featured on the Weezer frontman's collection of demos.

Posted 4th February 2008, 6:19pm in Features
Listen! Rivers Cuomo - I Was Made For You Rivers Cuomo releases a collection of home-recorded demos today (4th February), called 'Alone: The Home Recordings Of Rivers Cuomo'. The bit most people are likely to get all excited about is the early version of Weezer's infamous 'Buddy Holly', although it also features tracks from the band's abandoned 'Songs From The Black Hole' album, and a cover of Ice Cube's 'The Bomb'. No, us neither.

Here's Rivers' explanation of song 'I Was Made For You' (as taken from the record's liner notes):

Spring, 2004

In 2004, a particular style of song was calling me again, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to write melodies, giant, huge, beautiful, soaring melodies. I especially liked to compose at the piano, where the melodies could flow beyond the constraints of my limited voice, and my left hand could explore the pleasures of melodic counterpoint in the bass line. I started taking music composition lessons from Bruce Reich at UCLA.

I also started dating a woman in the L.A. Philharmonic. She was the most extraordinary musician. The calluses on her fingertips were about ten times as thick as mine and she had a giant purple-black hickie on her neck from playing the violin. She knew way more about classical music than I did. At the same time, though, she was a huge Metallica fan and had a caustic wit. But ultimately, there was an innocence about her: I had to explain to her the bawdiness in the title of Metallica's DVD, Cunning Stunts, which sat on her shelf.

I had written a beautiful chorus melody on the piano a few months before and was wondering what to do with it until I met the L.A. Philharmonic woman and then bam, "I was made for you". I had Weezer's engineer, Chad, come down to SIR and get our pro recording gear set up to record this song. But once I started recording the vocals, I asked him to leave, because. . . I wanted to be alone.

Click here to listen to 'I Was Made For You'.
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