Weezer “Unbreak My Heart (Toni Braxton Cover)”
From the late 1980′s into the entirety of the ’90′s, if you were a pop, country, soul or rock artist aiming for that crossover mega-smash (and the chance to really show off your pipes), there was only one songwriter you needed to seek out: Diane Warren. Push one of Warren’s super-emotional, cheese-tastic power ballads as a single and you were damn near guaranteed a number one record followed shortly after by a trunk load of award nominations.
Just ask Toni Braxton, who earned her biggest hit ever and a Grammy with 1996′s Warren-penned “Unbreak My Heart”, a Spanish guitar-dressed over-dramatic plea for reconciliation that further certified her status as one of the era’s top R&B divas.
Of the millions of people that song touched (and don’t act like you didn’t get all soggy-eyed at least one of the bajillion times you came across it): none other than Rivers Cuomo and Rick Rubin, who were so taken by “Heart” they somehow convinced the rest of the guys in Weezer to cover it in their sessions for the band’s 2005 album, Make Believe.
As we know now, the song never made it onto the album, but it has managed to surface five years later, garnering placement as one of several unreleased entries compiled on the forthcoming Weezer odds-and-ends collection Death to False Metal, and after giving it a spin, we have to admit we kinda dig it.
Straddling that familiar awkward Weezer balance of being ironic camp (piano-rock and laughably weak falsetto peaks!!!) and non-ironic heart-on-sleeve earnestness (Rivers’ plaintive vocals everywhere but the weak falsetto), the band’s run-through of “Unbreak My Heart” is definitely corny, but it works, sounding like it could’ve been a perfectly solid homage-to-Whitesnake lighters-in-the-air number with a little more studio polish (and the aid of Braxton’s version never existing).
Death to False Metal arrives November 2nd.
Weezer – Unbreak My Heart (Toni Braxton Cover)
