A dedicated Twitter account named @WeezerAfrica has been campaigning for months, requesting that Weezer cover Toto’s karaoke classic ‘Africa’.
Now the band have finally responded to the account, fulfilling half of the fan’s request. However, instead of covering the 1982 hit ‘Africa’ as requested, Rivers Cuomo and co. have covered another song by Toto instead.
Their song of choice, ‘Rosanna’ won the 1983 Grammy Award for Record of the Year. It charted at number two in the UK charts, beaten to the top spot first by The Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’ and then ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Survivor the following week.
According to Noisey, the @WeezerAfrica account is run by a 14-year-old fan named Mary, from Cleveland. Weezer shared the cover by directly tweeting the account with the new Toto cover.
#WeezerCoverAfrica turned into #WeezerCoveringRosanna ???
— weezer cover africa by toto (@weezerafrica) May 24, 2018
https://twitter.com/MatthewTrecek/status/999676919221112833
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Rivers Cuomo has covered multiple other songs in the past, including tracks by Oasis, REM, Pixies and Smashing Pumpkins.
The band also covered ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast last summer at FireFly music festival.
Weezer are currently at work on new record ‘The Black Album’, and earlier this year the band stated that it would be available on May 25 talking to Zan Rowe on Australian radio station Double J.
Instead, the band marked the date with their new ‘Rosanna’ cover.
Weezer have been working ‘The Black Album’ before beginning ‘Pacific Daydream’, as frontman Rivers Cuomo explained to NME last year. “When our tour ended last summer with Panic! At The Disco, I came straight home and started work on ‘The Black Album’. I was writing songs each day and would put MP3s in a Dropbox folder called ‘The Black Album’.
“One day I wrote a song that was really good, but didn’t fit in that folder because it was a different style, so I put it in another folder called ‘Pacific Daydream’,” he continued. “Over the month, I realised that the ‘Pacific Daydream’ folder filled up first. It was very strong and a unified statement. It wasn’t planned, but that’s how it turned out this time.”