"Say It Ain't So" is the third single by American rock band Weezer, released in 1995 as both a single and as a part of their debut album, The Blue Album.
Written by Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo (like most Weezer songs), it is revealed in a blank">DNTO Podcast that the song came to be after he had all the music finished and one line, "Say it Ain't So." He asked himself, "What am I saying this to?" Rivers made a connection to an incident in high school where he came home and saw a bottle of beer in the fridge. He believed his parents split up when he was four because his dad was an alcoholic. All of a sudden there was this beer in the fridge and he knew it wasn't his, his brother's or his mom's... it must be his step-dad's. This made Rivers fear his stepfather would leave his family, so he wrote the song about that moment of seeing that beer.
It turns out many years later, to his surprise, that this wasn't true. The only reason he had to believe his real father drank was due to a photograph that he had of him wearing a wifebeater shirt, smoking a cigar with a bottle of beer in his hand. This was his dad to him because he didn't really know him. His mother told him, "What are you talking about? Your dad didn't drink!" It turns out his dad was just goofing off and posing like that in the photo.
As noted in the Weezer DVD collection "_Video Capture Device," and the slip cover of the re-released special edition of their debut album, the video was filmed at the old "Amherst House" where the band used to rehearse and record. The video also features a cameo by the band's webmaster/band photographer/archivist and close friend for many years, Karl Koch. It got #23 on The New Zealand show U Choose 40 Sing-A-Long Classics.
The song is featured on the music video game Rock Band as a playable track.
