THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Interesting. There was a long-running rumor that Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo once wrote songs using an equation he built from the deconstructed elements of the most popular “alt-pop” songs.

He (kind of) addresses the rumor directly here:

Q: Didn’t you try to calculate the mathematical equation for a perfect pop song?

A: That’s a pretty gross oversimplification. I’ve always deconstructed music and tried to figure out the order in which the parts were put together. In what order did the writer come up with the various elements? Did he start with the music or the riff or the melody or the beat? It wasn’t out of a desire to find one particular formula that would always work for anything I did but rather just to get a sense of all the possibilities that are out there. When I write a song, I’m just going on my instincts and when I’m writing at my best, it’s different every time. I remember asking Billie Joe years ago about some of the songs on the first Green Day album, ones with some pretty intense guitar riffs at the root, and he didn’t write them on a guitar, he wrote those in his head. I don’t remember exactly what my theory was on those songs, but I know I was surprised. Another one that really blew my mind was “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” this really beautiful piano song, right? I read that it was written on guitar. I think it was one of the pillars of my theory that piano songs are better than guitar songs.