Is it possible to hear something profound in a song intended for children? Still, with all the hype surrounding the latest Weezer album, Hurley, you would hard pressed to find another song on it that compares to “All My Friends Are Insects”, created for the hip kids TV show Yo Gabba Gabba!.
On the surface it seems like a mere kiddie tune about different types of “bugs” and how “they have a big role in our world”, but you can decipher a deeper meaning out of it. Lyrics like “I have a friend and she’s a butterfly / She flies from flower to flower drinking sweet nectar, With hundreds of friends / They sleep up in the trees at night“ and “These are my friends, Even though they are bugs“ could represent the intellectual rock star who lives amongst and entertains the party-crazed masses. Coincidentally, the same could be said for lead singer Rivers Cuomo, a married Harvard graduate who sings songs like “Beverly Hills” and “We Are All on Drugs” for a living. Like “All My Friends Are Insects”, the majority of Weezer songs initially seem simple, but there is also a meaningful statement being made.
So, imagine my surprise after looking at the liner notes of the Yo Gabba Gabba! Vol. 2 : Music Is Awesome album that this song also appears on. “Insects” isn’t written by Cuomo, but by former member of the Aquabats (and the voice of “Muno the Cyclops”), Adam Deibert. Still, maybe there is something to the theory: in a recent interview, Rivers Cuomo praised the song’s lyrics. I could go on about how other songs on the soundtrack, like Jimmy Eat World’s “Beautiful Day With My Best Friend” and Hot Hot Heat’s “Time To Go Outdoors” are similar to some of the songs of 1960s psychedelia, but let’s just watch some of the videos instead.
