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"Undone - The Sweater Song" is a song by the American rock band Weezer, released on their self-titled 1994 debut album. It was released as their debut single in 1994. Lead singer Rivers Cuomo has commented many times on the song's inception. Said Cuomo, "I took typing, Psych 101, and English 101 that semester. It was in my English class that I heard the analogy of the unraveling sweater. Dr. Eisenstein used the image to demonstrate the effectiveness of focused thesis statement in an essay. 'All I have to do is hold a single thread in your sweater and it will unravel as you walk away.'
In 2009, Cuomo admitted to Rolling Stone that "Undone (The Sweater Song)" was an "almost complete rip-off" of "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" by the band Metallica. Said Cuomo, "I was trying to write a Velvet Underground-type song because I was super into them, and I came up with that guitar riff. I just picked up that acoustic guitar and the first thing I played was that riff. And it just feels so classic to me, even now when the band starts to play it, it just takes over the energy in the room and you’re just transported into the world of Weezer. It wasn’t until years after I wrote it that I realized it’s almost a complete rip-off of ‘Sanitarium’ by Metallica. It just perfectly encapsulates Weezer to me – you’re trying to be cool like Velvet Underground but your metal roots just pump through unconsciously." Early concepts for the dialogue sections in the song was to utilize a sound collage assembled by longtime friend of the band, Karl Koch. This concept was carried through the recording of The Blue Album, but Geffen Records were wary of the cost of licensing the samples, and put a halt to that version. Late in the album's production, a spoken version of dialogue was recorded at the Amherst house, by bassist Matt Sharp and Koch, as well as a dialogue between Koch and Mykel Allan. The tapes were then sent overnight to New York to be 'flown in' to the final mix. When performed live, these sections typically featured improvised banter by the band. In the 2010s, however, the band began simply playing a recording of the dialogue heard on the album version.
When the song was chosen as the lead single for The Blue Album, the band's record label requested a shortened version of the song to be played on the radio. While Weezer had agreed to a shortening of both the song's opening and closing sections, there was an additional adjustment made which shortened the song's final guitar solo by several seconds. Weezer had approved of this version of the song without hearing the edits made to the solo, and upon hearing this version of the song, they requested the solo edit be removed. The original radio edit had a run-time of 3:58, which was extended to 4:10 in the 'corrected' full guitar solo edit. The distinct guitar tone for the "Undone" intro came out of a specific section of The Blue Album recording process, during which Cuomo and original guitarist Jason Cropper spent a few days in the attic of Electric Ladyland studios focusing only on the record's guitar parts. "Undone" is one of Weezer's most popular songs. The track reached 57 on the US Billboard Hot 100 List of 1994. Allmusic.com gave "Undone" a 5 star rating and also named it an "AMG Track Pick."
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