Put Me Back Together

This lovesick ballad was written by Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo together with Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler of the All-American Rejects. Ritter told Rolling Stone: "I was playing Weezer songs when I was 13 at parties, so now I can die happy."

Both All-American Rejects and Weezer share the same label, and after a couple phone calls, Ritter and Wheeler found themselves being greeted by Cuomo in a shed behind his Malibu house, ready to pen a song. Ritter told Rolling Stone that once there, "I pulled out a chorus that I'd been carrying around for a couple years from my pocket. I thought there was a reason why I didn't use it, but I knew, after hearing him doing the song, I dropped to my knees and exalted to the sky."
Ritter added regarding working with Cuomo on the track: "I brought out the chorus, I started writing the verse, he started writing lyrics, and you can tell his hand is in the lyrics. I just kept my head down, I was nervous as s--t. I was shaking in my boots, literally. I just kept my head down and hummed until he said 'That's cool.'"

Wheeler was apparently as starstuck as Ritter about working with the Weezer frontman. He told MTV News his side of the story of their collaboration: "A few weeks ago, we [went] to his house - so that was cool - sat in a room with three guitars, and just kinda, Ty had a little idea, and we kind of riffed on it," Wheeler added. "And then we never heard anything. So we're shooting our video for our next single, 'I Wanna,' yesterday, and our A&R guy comes to the shoot with a CD of the finished version, and I was like, 'Oh, so that happened!'
And so I shot [Cuomo] an e-mail saying what a privilege it was working with him, and this sounds great, you guys did a great job with the song, you know, stuff like that," Wheeler continued. "And he replied back, and at the end, it said, 'Definitely miss your guitar playing on the final version.' So, I saved that e-mail, and it's probably gonna stay in my star file for quite a while."