Songfacts®:

• Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo wrote this song with Sam Hollander, who has co-written several Panic! at the Disco songs, including "High Hopes."
• Weezer delivered this song as part of a NASA collaboration with Apple Music to celebrate the Juno mission. The song was released on Apple Music on June 30, 2016 as the spacecraft approached Jupiter - it entered the planet's orbit on July 4, 2016. Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross were also part of the project, contributing the song "Juno."
  
  "I Love The USA" later appeared on the deluxe edition of Weezer's White Album.
• This is a patriotic anthem, which celebrates the American spirit in its quest to explore the solar system. Or is it?
  
  There is more than a hint of sarcasm in the song, with Rivers Cuomo singing lyrics like "I love the USA, f--k yeah, this place is great" and "Home of the brave, dog on a leash." It's probably not what NASA had in mind when they commissioned it, but anyone who knows the work of Weezer could have seen it coming. The song is just far enough off the subversive scale to get though, with a title that would pass muster if you don't listen to the lyric.
  
  Cuomo gave this statement about the project: "When Apple and NASA asked us to be involved with Juno's historic landing on July 4th, this song seemed like the perfect fit."
• In a Songfacts interview with the song's co-writer, Sam Hollander, he told the story of how it was written. "On that one, we sat out back and he had this title that I just adored, and he was singing 'I love the USA,'" he said. "We were playing around with strange fragments of imagery that I thought should not connect in any way shape or form. That's the way Rivers' mind works. There's just so many interesting visuals."
  
  He added: "I don't think the song was written as cynically as it might sound. It's almost a Choose Your Own Adventure, like you can infer whatever you want out of it. As somebody who writes lyric and melody, Rivers is one of these guys I really look up to because he's so unbelievably creative with turning a phrase, and there's a lot of stuff in there that's his genius."
• Patton Oswalt stars in the video, where he lip-synchs to the song in what appears to be the Oval Office. Perhaps they used a set from the TV series Veep, which Patton was on.
• This is the first Weezer song to include the F-bomb. In the clean version, "F-k yeah" is replace with "F yeah."