Happy 37th Birthday, Beck!
Posted on July 9th, 2007 by Josh Hathaway
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Few artists have better walked the line between cool and uncool, hip and unhip than Beck. The “Loser” pose captured Gen-X slackers, and Beck built a career from there. He mixed dizzying electronic music with slacker rhymes and a lazy drawl, and that was just one of his musical personas. He may not have gone as far as David Bowie in terms of turning these multiple identities into different characters, but a trip through the Beck discography can be a schitzophrenic journey.
In honor of Beck’s 37th birthday, here’s a quick 10-song leap through the music of Beck.
- “Loser” from Mellow Gold: It really started here then, didn’t it? Sure, he had indie releases before this album, but America was introduced to Beck by “Loser.” Even ESPN has bogarted a line from this song (Kenny Mayne).
- “Where It’s At” from Odelay: I’ll admit, I thought Beck’s shelf life would end with “Loser.” I thought it was a novelty song. I was wrong.
- “Jack-Ass” from Odelay: A mix of the sweet and the bizarre on this one.
- “Sexx Laws” from Midnight Vultures: Not my favorite album, but Beck’s tribute to the ’70s had its moments.
- “Bottle of Blues” from Mutations: My favorite song from Beck’s first collaboration with Nigel Godrich.
- “The Golden Age” from Sea Change: This is the album that turned me from a casual Beck fan to someone completely in awe of his talents. The hipster has a heart, and it got all kinds of broken. Sea Change is the best breakup album of this generation.
- “Paper Tiger” from Sea Change: Great orchestration, great bass, great melody, and the best closing stanza ever:
There’s one road to the morning
There’s one road to the truth
There’s one road back to civilization
But there’s no road back to you. - “Girl” from Guero: Guero is my favorite Beck album, period.
- “Missing” from Guero: A song that has the feel of one from Sea Change with a little Guero sonic style. Classic.
- “Nausea” from The Information: A lot of Beck fans were a lot crazier for The Information than I was. I don’t hate it. I just don’t love it, not the way I do Guero and Sea Change.
Filed under: Beck
Josh,
I am going to go back and revisit Guero, while I liked it, It was not my favorite like Odelay and Mutations were. I agree with all your choices although I have not heard The Information.
When I first heard Beck back in the Odelay days, I thought that here was first genius artist since Eno with “Here Come The Warm Jets” or Before and “After Science”
T.
Oops That should read “Before and After Science”
T.
T.,
I came to Beck more gradually but now see him as one of the few artists of these recent generations deserving of the title “genius.” A lot of great music has been made in the last 20 years, but genius goes beyond that. Beck is genius.
Guero is not everyone’s favorite Beck CD. I love it. EB, himself a huge Beck fan, is a big fan of that record, too.
Now that Jon McLaughlin has hit the scene, I’m waiting for *John* McLaughlin to become the next British fusion guitarist to release an album titled “Who Else?!”