Rick Rubin produced "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" with the band between April 2007 and February 2008.[2] In the liner notes of the deluxe edition of The Red Album, Cuomo stated that the song did not originally have the subtitle "Variations on a Shaker Hymn", but when guitarist Brian Bell's mother came into the studio to see them, she mentioned that the melody from the song sounded similar to a Shaker hymn that the choir sang in her church.[2] Cuomo wrote that he realised that people might notice the resemblance: "I knew people were going to come at us after and say 'Hey, you guys ripped off that hymn.' So I put the credit in there off the bat."[2] As a result, the band looked up the hymn and indeed the melody was so similar to Joseph Brackett's "Simple Gifts" that they credited the hymn with the subtitle.[3][4]
The song was originally recorded in a room that the band nicknamed "The War Room." Bell states that "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" took a long time to record; "I think the song 'The Greatest Man That Ever Lived' used about 20 feet of butcher paper and we discussed how we were going to successfully record it almost as long as actually recording it."[2]
In an interview with KROQ-FM, Rivers Cuomo talked extensively about the concept behind the song. The song was originally titled "The Ballad of Oswaldo Sánchez", inspired by Sánchez playing in the 2006 World Cup after the death of his father. He mentioned the influence for each section, including the Baroque counterpoint vocal style which inspired the final 'Bach' & 'Beethoven' sections.[5] In a January 21, 2009, interview on the NPR program Fresh Air, Cuomo stated that "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)" is his favorite Weezer song.
