How I Love the USA Became the First Weezer Song in Space [Video]

Long before Katy Perry went to space, Weezer went to Jupiter. Back in 2016, lead singer Rivers Cuomo said, “NASA contacted us through Apple and asked for a song for the Juno mission and we gave ‘em I Love the USA and they dug it and there you go.”

The Juno spacecraft traveled through the solar system for five years before reaching Jupiter’s orbit on American Independence Day—July 4th, 2016.

Cuomo says that when he wrote the song, he had been spending a lot of time away from home, touring and missing his home country. “But there are all kinds of mixed feelings, I’m sure everyone has mixed feelings about where they are from, so, I tried to get all of it out into a song. I guess, I think of America, at least compared to the place I was at, at the time, as a place where there is respect for the individual and it seems …