Tag Archives: Beck

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Song of the Day #524: ‘Girl’ – Beck

In 2005, Beck released Guero, a return after several detours to the vibe he tapped on Odelay, and his top-charting album to date.

Just about anything would feel like a let-down after Sea Change, but in a way Guero reflects the lessons Beck learned making that album. It’s a more mature, reflective record, even as it indulges in street-smart hip-hop flourishes and oddball backing tracks. He seems more focused on this album, less likely to throw in everything including the kitchen sink. The result is one of his most consistent records, and one of his best.

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Song of the Day #523: ‘Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime’ – Beck

Beck waited three years after Sea Change before releasing another album, but in between he found some time to record a song for my favorite movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

‘Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime’ was originally recorded by British pop group The Korgis in 1980 and was a modest hit, though I’d never heard it before. Beck’s version is a note-for-note copy but the production and delivery are far moodier than the synth-pop sheen on the original.

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Song of the Day #522: ‘Lonesome Tears’ – Beck

Beck’s fifth studio album, 2002’s Sea Change, remains his finest achievement, and I consider it one of the best albums I own. It’s up there with Blood On the Tracks and The Road to Ensenada as one of the greatest break-up albums of all-time.

Stylistically, Sea Change see-sawed back to the somber acoustic mood of Mutations, the polar opposite of the frenzied eclecticism of Midnite Vultures. Both musically and (especially) lyrically, Beck is at his most straight-forward on this album. It’s as if all the genre blending and cryptic lyrics on his previous records were a mask and he’s finally allowing his listeners to look him directly in the eye. And what we see there can best be described as beautiful heartbreak.

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Song of the Day #518: ‘Hollywood Freaks’ – Beck

Having slowed down and mellowed out a year earlier on Mutations, Beck reversed course in 1999 and released Midnite Vultures, a neon slice of pure electrified funk.

More than anything, he spends the length of this fabulous album staking his claim as the white Prince, especially on epic closer ‘Debra,’ an homage to every smooth R&B booty call song ever written (though certainly the first to feature the lyrics “Lady, step inside my Hyundai”).

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Song of the Day #517: ‘O Maria’ – Beck

Two years after Odelay took the music world by storm, Beck released a low-key, acoustic album that featured none of the kitchen-sink experimentation for which he’d become known. Mutations is a mix of straight-forward country, blues and folk songs (with a tropicalia tune appropriately named ‘Tropicalia’ thrown in for good measure) and it was the first indication of exactly how versatile a songwriter Beck is.

Mutations is a decidedly downbeat album, filled with songs about loneliness and despair. Here’s a typical lyric, from the song ‘Dead Melodies’: “Night birds will cackle, rotting like apples on trees, sending their dead melodies to me.” This isn’t the last time Beck would wallow in beautiful misery on record… it’s something he excels at and would return to on his best album (which I’ll get to soon enough).

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