Superfriend

"Superfriend"
Demo by Rivers Cuomo
Album	Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo
Released	December 18, 2007
Recorded	February 1995 in Hamburg, Germany
Length	3:30
Label	Geffen
Writer(s)	Rivers Cuomo
RC#	205
Status	Released
Professional reviews
Teenage Victory Songs (Positive) Marked as "The Grand Playlist"
Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo track listing
"Dude, We're Finally Landing" (11) "Superfriend" (12) "Lover in the Snow" (13) Songs from the Black Hole (Tracklist 1) track listing "Tired of Sex" (6) "Superfriend" (7) "She's Had a Girl" (8) Songs from the Black Hole (Tracklist 2) track listing "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams" (11) "Superfriend" (12) "Superfriend (Reprise)" (13)
Rivers Cuomo song chronology
"This Is Not For Me" (RC# 204) "Superfriend" (RC# 205) "She's Had a Girl" (RC# 206)
Songs from the Black Hole cover
Cover for SFTBH demo

"Superfriend" is a song by Rivers Cuomo, originally intended as a track for the unrealized album concept Songs from the Black Hole (the concept that later morphed into Pinkerton).

Appearances

• Video Capture Device (2004)
• Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2007)
• Alone III: The Pinkerton Years 1994-1997 (2011)
• Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years (2020)

Overview

"Superfriend" is from Act I. It's a conversation between Jonas and Laurel, after Jonas has slipped again with Maria.

- Rivers Cuomo, Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, liner notes

Within the fiction of Songs from the Black Hole, "Superfriend" features the character of Jonas (voiced by Rivers Cuomo) confiding to Laurel, the "good girl" character (also voiced by Cuomo in the demo, but intended to be voiced by Rachel Haden). Jonas reiterates his sentiments from previous tracks "Oh No, This Is Not for Me" and "Tired of Sex," chiding himself for giving into Maria's seduction despite the fact he does not love her. Laurel urges Jonas to grow up and be better than that. Jonas finds himself smitten with Laurel, but she can see through his act.

Cuomo is known to have recorded two full demos of "Superfriend," either around Christmas of 1994 or, more likely, February of 1995 (in Hamburg, Germany, where the rest of Weezer were stranded while bassist Matt Sharp flew back to the US following his father's stroke). The more well-known demo, released in 2007 as part of the compilation album Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, is intended as a duet between the characters of Jonas and Laurel. A second demo, recorded in 1995 and released in 2020 as part of the digital demo compilation Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years, features an alternate chorus, less articulate vocals, and is seemingly intended to be sung only from Jonas' perspective.

By February of 1995, Cuomo had assembled a tracklist of demos (dubbed by Karl Koch as "Tracklist 1"), featuring "Superfriend" as the seventh track (following "Tired of Sex" and preceding "She's Had a Girl"). By the fall of 1995, however, as Cuomo began writing new demos during a semester at Harvard, he began to question the direction of the Songs from the Black Hole concept. Cuomo assembled a second tracklist (dubbed "Tracklist 2") that Koch described as a "last-ditch effort" to salvage the SFTBH concept. This second tracklist featured "Superfriend" later on the album, as the thirteenth track (following "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams" and the non-SFTBH track "Lisa," and preceding a reprise of "Longtime Sunshine." "Superfriend" was attempted as a full band at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, but the recording was later erased. Ultimately, the Songs from the Black Hole concept—and "Superfriend" with it— would be scrapped in favor of what would eventually become Pinkerton.

"Superfriend" was desired by fans for several years before its release. In the early 2000s, Karl Koch named the song as one of his favorite unreleased Weezer songs and had planned to include it in a rarities compilation that would never be released. Footage of "Superfriend" being performed in the studio, as well as acoustically in a hotel room, appeared on the 2004 Weezer DVD Video Capture Device.

Cuomo's full demo of "Superfriend" was released in 2007 as part of the compilation album Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo. A brief "reprise" of the song also appeared as part of a reprise of "Longtime Sunshine" on the album Alone III: The Pinkerton Years 1994-1997 in 2011. Cuomo's alternate-chorus demo was released in 2020 as part of the digital compilation Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years.

Lyrics

[JONAS:]
What the hell am I doing
Thinking with my willy?
Knowing I don't love her
I tell her no,
Then kiss her toes.

[LAUREL:]
What the heck are you doing?
Leading on that poor girl
I know there's something better
Deep in you.
Now let it through

[JONAS:]
Pain, pain, go away (LAUREL: go away)
Come again another day (LAUREL: another day)
'Cause I've got a friend tonight (LAUREL: friend tonight)
A super friend to [TOGETHER:] make things right

[JONAS:]
I'll turn away from weakness
And turn to something better.
Show me how to live right
I never noticed you
But now I worship you.

[LAUREL:]
Don't be talking silly (JONAS: Now I worship you)
Save the sweets for the young girls (JONAS: Now I worship you)
You can talk for real to me (JONAS: Ooh...)
Close your eyes
[TOGETHER:]
And leave the lies

???

Waiting, waiting
We clearly ???

To help me
To show me
To ???
To love me

What the hell am I doing
Leading on my girlfriend?
Taking her ???
And kissing her on her nose

What the hell am I doing
Leading on this girlfriend
Leading on my girlfriend
Tell her no, then kiss her toe

She's ???
in the deep black hole
And I can't save her
I just can't save her, no

What the hell is he doing?
I know what ???
Leading on ???
??? and he says "no"

Oh, ???
Fall into a deep black hole
And I can't tell her
I just can't tell her

See also

• List of Rivers Cuomo songs
• List of Weezer songs