You Were a Man

"You Were a Man"
Demo by
Album	Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years
Recorded	1995
Length	0:42
Writer(s)	Rivers Cuomo
RC#	?
Status	demo released

"You Were a Man" is an interstitial song written and demoed by Rivers Cuomo for the aborted rock opera concept album Songs from the Black Hole.

Appearances

• Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years (2020)

Overview

"You Were a Man" was recorded by Cuomo in 1995. The existence of the track was not known to fans prior to its initial release in 2020. Though the song's metadata confirms that it was recorded for Songs from the Black Hole, the track was never documented in the Recording History, the circulating versions of the Catalog O' Riffs, the book The Pinkerton Diaries, or on any of the first three Alone compilations. As such, it is unknown which characters are meant to be singing or where, precisely, the song is meant to fall in the album narrative.

"You Were a Man" was initially leaked online to fans through the demo storefront on riverscuomo.com on November 7, 2020. The song was sold to a user through the storefront a few days later, on November 11, whereupon it was made freely available to other users of the site. The song was later sold through storefront beginning on November 22 as part of the digital compilation Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years.

Lyrics

[???]:
All you did, all you could (I'm so sorry)
You were a man and I knew you would (I'm so sorry)
Ah, you did all you can (You...)
Ohh
You did all you can
You were a man and I knew you would
All you could, ah, you're a man

See Also

• Songs from the Black Hole
• List of Rivers Cuomo songs