Songfacts®:

• This mid-tempo romancer was originally a song written and recorded by Weezer in 2004-05 but hadn't been formally released when it reached Sugar Ray's ears in 2009. When word got out that the band was looking for songs for their Music For Cougars album, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo sent over a few tracks for consideration, and "Love Is The Answer" was the standout. Sugar Ray's version retains Cuomo's guitar solo and vocals on the breakdown.
  
  Mark McGrath has his own take on why Cuomo lent them a Weezer tune. "My theory is that Sugar Ray is so uncool, that we're cool to him," the Sugar Ray singer told Icon Vs. Icon in 2009. "He's so ahead of the irony curve. He is wearing a cowboy hat and a mustache on the cover of his new record. He's so ahead of the cool game, that he's already ahead of the '90s irony train coming through. I think we might be the recipients of his cool factor."
• Weezer reworked the song for their 2009 Raditude album, which dropped a few months after Music For Cougars.
• When Sugar Ray's career took off thanks to their 1997 hit "Fly," they earned a slot on the soundtrack to Scream 2, the hotly anticipated sequel to the 1996 slasher flick that resurrected the horror genre and yielded a hit soundtrack. So it was a pretty sweet gig for Sugar Ray. Instead of writing a new song for the project, they offered an unreleased one: "Rivers" - a tribute to Rivers Cuomo.
• Music For Cougars is the last Sugar Ray album to feature founding members Stan Frazier (drums) and Murphy Karges (bass), along with longtime turntablist DJ Homicide, who all left the group within a couple years after the release. In fact, the band didn't issue another studio album for 10 years, when Little Yachty hit the shelves in 2019.