Songfacts®:

• This song is about stage-fright.
  
  My head is spinning
  It's the beginning of the end
  The people freak out when I walk out there
  So scared
  
  Rivers Cuomo is recounting the nerves he feels as he walks onto the stage at a gig.
• Weezer recorded the song for their Van Weezer album, which was inspired by a return to Rivers Cuomo's heavy metal roots. Musically, "Beginning of the End" draws its influence from the hair metal bands of the 1980s (such as Van Halen, who inspired the album's title). Cuomo told Q magazine:
  
  "Starting from Quiet Riot in the mid-'70s up to the mid-'80s, heavy metal was more than just music. It was more than just a lifestyle too, it was a tribe you belonged to and gave you a sense of purpose and protection. You could be walking to the mall and see another guy with long hair, wearing a leather jacket or jean jacket with patches, and you'd go, there goes another metalhead. You were part of the same army."
• A reworked version, "Beginning of the End (Wyld Stallyns Edit)," is the closing song in the 2020 Bill & Ted Face the Music movie. The film follows the titular characters' rock band, Wyld Stallyns, racing against time to create a song that will prevent the end of the universe.
• Bill & Ted music supervisor Jonathan Leahy, a huge Weezer fan, first talked to the band about being involved in the movie in the summer of 2019. "We started listening to unreleased tracks from them, which was a joy for me," he told American Songwriter. "When I heard the lyrics, 'watch us brush off the dust, in heavy metal we trust,' and then I heard the amazing, epic guitar solo complete with two-handed tapping, I was like, 'this is the song!'"
• In the music video Rivers Cuomo plays the same Gibson guitar Ted plays at the end of the film.