Do You Wanna Get High?

"Do You Wanna Get High?"
Single by Weezer
Album	Weezer (The White Album)
Released	November 3, 2015
Recorded	2015
Length	3:29
Label	Crush Music/Atlantic Records
Writer(s)	Rivers Cuomo
Producer(s)	Jake Sinclair
Status	Officially released
Live debut	December 8, 2015
Stream	Spotify
	Apple Music
Professional reviews
Teenage Victory Songs (Positive) Marked as "The Grand Playlist"
Weezer singles chronology
"Thank God for Girls" (2015) "Do You Wanna Get High?" (2015) "King of the World" (2016)
Weezer (The White Album) track listing
"(Girl We Got a) Good Thing" (4) "Do You Wanna Get High?" (5) "King of the World" (6)

This page is for the 2015 single. For the 2001 demo, see D'ya Wanna Get High?. For the Rivers Cuomo demo formerly titled "Do You Wanna Get High?", see Medicine.

"Do You Wanna Get High?" is a single released by Weezer on November 3, 2015. It is the fifth track from The White Album, although the album was still unannounced upon the song's release.

Appearances

• Weezer (The White Album) (2016)

Overview

Origins

It was initially thought by some fans that the song may have originated in 2001. A song or idea is listed in the Catalog of Riffs from October 4 of 2001 as "D'ya Wanna Get High?" with a COR# of 351. Additionally, on Rivers Cuomo's genius.com annotation of the song, he noted that the song was "about me and my darling girlfriend in 2000/2001". Cuomo also noted that the same girlfriend was the subject of the songs "O Girlfriend" and "O Girl," noting that the former song contains a similar lyrical theme in one section ("Taking pills and mellowing out"). Additional annotations explain the inspiration of other lines within the song. The lyrics to the backing vocals near the end of the song were not listed in the annotations. In January of 2016, producer Jake Sinclair discussed the song's history on the AllThingsWeezer forums (under the username "wannabeezer"):

RC and i worked very closely on the writing for TWA starting around March or so. we had decided to keep 1 of the 235 demos (that was a fun weekend of listening), there were a few delightful nuggets from the green era in there, but this wasn't one of them. usually at that stage i'll co-write with the artist, but like you guys, i prefer it when rivers writes entirely by himself and by far the majority of this album is that (although i think you'll be fairly pleased with a co-writer that appears on 2 of the tracks). do you wanna get high started as a demo that he made in late march/april or so... it had the "do you wanna get hiiiiigh" part first, a lyric about romeo and juliet, then a demo/mumbling version of what is now the verse. i thought it would be cool to flip the two parts, make dywgh the chorus, even though the melody was lower. it's possible that he recycled the title, but i'm almost positive that the "d'ya wanna get high" thing is a coincidence (via his method for coming up with titles/concepts at that stage). i was over at his house a couple of days after he sent over the demo. he said he wanted to find a different title, didn't want to have another pro-drugs song or something that could be perceived as such. i had just broken my hand in a motorcycle accident, had surgery, was in a cast, had just gotten off of the meds. we had had a few conversations about prescription drugs, about his past with them. he had also given me a copy of Pinkerton Diaries, so i was asking a lot of questions about that time period of his life. i advised him to write the song about himself, his own experiences, a narrative, and to keep the "do you want to get high" lyric/title. a day or two later, he sent over a new demo with the lyrics as they are (except for the 2nd verse, which i had him re-work - light up the pipe / If there’s no neighbors / we don’t want them to see /cuz they’ll narc on our ass... as seen on rap genius). the bridge came from an entirely different song which i believe was called, at the time, "i'll never get tired of you". one thing we were very conscious of at the time was to not have "lazy" bridges, one of my favorite things about pinkerton are the adventurous bridges. again, i thought the lyrics worked out nearly perfectly as is. it was as if the narrator was now singing to the drugs themselves. he made a few adjustments lyrically to the bridge, to make it fit. i was pumped! i'm glad that people picked up on the pinkerton style production... there's a lot more of that coming. i'll take a green comparison, but to my ears it's not as "slick" as that, the drums are more bombastic, everything more raw/unpredictable. the palm muting may have been what turned it green. we tried a version without it, but it just seemed to work in this song. there are only one or two more bits of palm muting on TWA, but only when absolutely necessary. i see my job as a producer is to help put weezer back in the spotlight, with the public. my job as a weezer fan is to alter everyone's "top 3" section of their album rankings. - Jake Sinclair, All Things Weezer forum post

Cuomo made the following comment on the song's origins in the Weezer Fan Club Facebook group: "DYWGH verse/chorus is from 2014. Bridge is from 2015. (chords taken from a j-rock song called shangri-la i heard while on a japan tour with Scott & Rivers)." The song is question is "Shangri-La" by Japanese rock band Chatmonchy.

The song's title was previously used for a demo co-written with Daniel Brummel and Ryen Slegr and later renamed "Medicine."

Release

"Do You Wanna Get High?" was released digitally a week after the previous single, "Thank God for Girls." In contrast to the latter song, which was seen as a departure from the style the band is known for, "Do You Wanna Get High?" was noted by fans as having something closer to the "classic Weezer sound." It debuted on November 2, 2015 on Beats 1 Radio during a band interview with Zane Lowe.

The song's chorus contains a reference to composer and songwriter Burt Bacharach.

The artwork used for the digital single is "Two Faces" by German psychedelic artist Pierre Schmidt (also known as "drømsjel").

Reception

Weezer Songblog Teenage Victory Songs marked this song with the distinction of "The Grand Playlist," a collection that recognizes Weezer's just-below-best material.

Known recordings

about this table

Performer(s)	Title	Filename	Date of recording	Recording location	Length	Appeared on	Notes
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Untitled7-1 do you wanna get high.mp3	2014—2015		0:33	Alone XII: The White Year	Chorus lyrics from "Do You Wanna Get High?"
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Untitled7-1.mp3	2014—2015		0:33	Alone XII: The White Year	Duplicate of Untitled7-1 do you wanna get high.mp3
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Untitled11-1.mp3	2014—2015		1:00	Alone XII: The White Year	Chorus lyrics from "Do You Wanna Get High?"
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Untitled2 6.mp3	2014—2015		0:18	Alone XII: The White Year	Chorus lyrics from "Do You Wanna Get High?"
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Untitled4 6.mp3	2014—2015		0:23	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	do_you_wanna_get_high_2014_11_17_13_.mp3	November 17, 2014		0:43	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Want To Get High  3.mp3	2015		2:42	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Want To Get High  4.mp3	2015		1:10	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Want To Get High   8 1.mp3	2015		0:45	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Want To Get High   8.mp3	2015		0:15	Alone XII: The White Year	Truncated version of Do You Want To Get High   8 1.mp3
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Want To Get High   9 jake.mp3	2015		2:52	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Want To Get High   11 new bri.mp3	2015		2:33	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Want To Get High   13 never t.mp3	2015		2:37	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Want To Get High   14 alt cho.mp3	2015		2:21	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Want To Get High   15 alt cho.mp3	2015		2:25	Alone XII: The White Year
Rivers Cuomo(?)	Do You Wanna Get High?	DYWGH JS rough2.mp3	2015
Weezer	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Wanna Get High   16 chorus shift.mp3	Summer/Fall 2015	Infrasonic Sound, Los Angeles, CA The Lair, Los Angeles, CA Studio X, Sonoma, CA United Recording, Los Angeles, CA The Village, Los Angeles, CA	1:41	Alone XII: The White Year	Alternate chorus, removed from Alone XII bundle November 23, 2020
Weezer	Do You Wanna Get High?	Do You Wanna Get High   16 chorus shift alt.mp3	Summer/Fall 2015	Infrasonic Sound, Los Angeles, CA The Lair, Los Angeles, CA Studio X, Sonoma, CA United Recording, Los Angeles, CA The Village, Los Angeles, CA	0:38	Alone XII: The White Year	Alternate chorus, removed from Alone XII bundle November 23, 2020
Weezer	Do You Wanna Get High?		Summer/Fall 2015	Infrasonic Sound, Los Angeles, CA The Lair, Los Angeles, CA Studio X, Sonoma, CA United Recording, Los Angeles, CA The Village, Los Angeles, CA	3:29	Weezer (The White Album)

Personnel

• Rivers Cuomo – lead guitar, lead vocals
• Patrick Wilson – percussion
• Brian Bell – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
• Scott Shriner - bass guitar, backing vocals

Lyrics

Crush up the blue
And inhale through your nose
Scrape every quark
From the wood in the floor

She said "Do you wanna get high?"
Don’t eat no dinner tonight
I took a road trip to Mexico
And scored a hundred count
Do you wanna get high?
It’s like we’re falling in love
We can listen to Bacharach
And stop at any point

Now our bones start to ache
As we cramp on the pot
And we fall to the floor
With our face in a knot

She said "Do you wanna get high?"
Don’t eat no dinner tonight
I took a road trip to Mexico
And scored a hundred count
Do you wanna get high?
It’s like we’re falling in love
We can listen to Bacharach
And stop at any point

Keep on doing what you do
‘Cuz I’ll never get tired of you
Don’t need booze
‘Cuz I’ll never get tired of you
Stop the tape, kill the lights, close the drapes
And keep doing what you do
‘Cuz I’ll never get tired of you

She said "Do you wanna get high?"
Don’t eat no dinner tonight
I took a road trip to Mexico
And scored a hundred count
Do you wanna get high?
It’s like we’re falling in love
We can listen to Bacharach
And stop at any point

(Sleeping with Mother Teresa)
(Drifting in a lone fantasia)
(Brahmin you recite the Veda)
(Beautiful as euthanasia)

External links

• Weezer – Do You Wanna Get High? Lyrics | Genius

See also

• List of Weezer songs
• List of Rivers Cuomo songs