When news of Mary Tyler Moore’s passing broke on Wednesday afternoon, the social media tributes came flowing in. But it wasn’t just nostalgic baby boomers who were bummed; part of the tide was made up of sentimental music fans who grew up in the ‘90s.
“I’m afraid my entire knowledge of Mary Tyler Moore comes from a Weezer song,” read one tweet, and dozens had similar sentiments. That song was their 1994 smash “Buddy Holly,” which featured singer Rivers Cuomo chirping the chorus “Oo-wee-oo, I look just like Buddy Holly/Oh-oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore.”
Not only did it become a chart hit, it became a cultural touchstone. “Buddy Holly” boasted a groundbreaking video directed by Spike Jonze, which interspersed footage of the band playing with clips of the classic TV series “Happy Days” — complete with a cameo by Al Molinaro, who played the owner of Arnold’s Drive-In during later seasons of the show.
Not only was “Buddy Holly” an MTV staple, the video was given away with copies of Microsoft’s Windows 95, as a way of demonstrating the system’s video playing power. Around 40 million sales of the program were recorded in the first year (not to mention countless pirated copies) exposing Mary Tyler Moore’s name to millions of people around the world. Bizarrely, the baby boomer icon was now having her name sung at the dawn of the tech revolution.
The story could have been very different. Originally, the couple in the chorus was Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Even when rewritten, Cuomo thought the song was cheesy and it almost didn’t even make their multimillion-selling, self-titled album (often referred to as “The Blue Album”). Luckily for the band and for Moore, producer Ric Ocasek (frontman of the Cars) convinced him it was worth keeping.
Moore showed her gratitude to the band in a brilliantly showbiz way. As former bassist Matt Sharp told The Aquarian in 1995, she “sent us each framed, personalized, autographed pictures! We all thought that was pretty amazing!”