Beck

BECK

Born: Beck Hansen; Los Angeles, California, 8 July 1970

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Odelay (1996)

Hit songs since 1990: "Where It's At," "Devil's Haircut," "New Pollution"

The talented chameleonlike singer/songwriter who calls himself Beck has been keeping his fans and critics guessing ever since the debut of his tongue-in-cheek, catchy, but elusive single "Loser" in 1993. Beck has released a handful of albums in just seven years, each one a cohesive unit but different from the others in scope, genre, inspiration, and tone. Some dismiss his lyrics as nonsensical gibberish, while others detect irony, sarcasm, cynicism, and hope. His multiplatinum-selling album Odelay! (1996) brought Beck into the mainstream pop world.

Beck is adept at combining elements of every genre of music that has influenced him into complete songs. He exemplifies the best of the folk tradition because his songs are well-constructed and based on roots music such as blues, jazz, and folk. But what separates Beck is the fearlessness with which he blends whatever moves him, whether it is James Brown–influenced soul music, the agile rhymes and rhythms of hip-hop, or the synthetic programming tools that allow him to weave and splice samples, beats, blips, loops, and other noises into postmodern songs in which everything is fodder for inspiration

Musical Background

Born in California, Beck grew up the son of a blue-grass street musician, David Campbell, and an office worker, Bibbe Hansen. He grew up in East Los Angeles, a section of the city known, at the time, for its crime problems. East L.A., however, was fraught with colorful characters and musical influences from all around the world, including Spanish, Caribbean, African, and Mexican. Beck credits his youth in Los Angeles as a huge musical influence. Beck also spent some time living with his grandparents in Kansas as a child and became deeply influenced by church hymns and gospel music; his grandfather was a Presbyterian minister.

At the age of sixteen, after spending most of his teen years working odd jobs, Beck bought a guitar and became a street musician, like his father. He played on the city buses, on the street, and in coffeehouses. He eventually caught the attention of an executive with BMG music, who connected him with Karl Stephenson, a hip-hop producer. The end result was the genre-spanning single "Loser," which put Beck on the map as a quirky new talent. Radio stations were infatuated with the song, and MTV played the video constantly. In the self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek song, Beck sings half in Spanish and half in English in the refrain, "Yo soy perdido / I'm a loser baby / So why don't you kill me?" During the verses he raps over scratchy beats and a repeated acoustic guitar riff. While some critics initially dismissed him as a one-hit wonder, this unusual song barely scratched the surface of his talents. The song's non sequitur lyrics caused some critics to believe they were just random, nonsensical words strung together; others recognize Beck's intent to play with language and create a jumbled, free-form poetry over guitar, drum machines, keyboards, and any other instrument.

From Loser to Multiplatinum Success

With major-label album debut Mellow Gold (1994), Beck was poised for an interesting and varied career. Odelay! (1996) proved to Beck's skeptics that "Loser" was no accident. Co-produced with the Dust Brothers, well known for their work with hip-hop and electronica artists, nearly every song on Odelay! offers something slightly different. With the lead single "Where It's At," which mixes elements of rap, blues, and other musical forms, Beck hit number five on the Billboard Modern Rock tracks chart and sixty-one on the Billboard Top 100. The song also earned him a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance (1996). The second single, "Devil's Haircut," with its spy-thriller guitar riff and sped-up, chunky beat-box drum loop in the chorus, is basically a funked-up blues song. No one knows what Beck really means when he says "I've got a devil's haircut / In my mind / got a devil's haircut / in my mind," but what the sound and the imagery together convey is more important than any literal reading of the words. Cribbing from a Rolling Stones tune and creating a loop of the guitar riff gave Beck inspiration for the self-deprecating song "Jack-Ass," in which he sings, "I've been creeping along in the same, stale shoes / Loose ends tying the noose in the back of my mind." Tunes like "Jack-Ass" prove that Beck could be literal and create easily understood metaphors.

After the huge success of Odelay!, Beck toured in support of the album and produced an album that was completely different, Mutations (1998). He wrote the songs, recorded them quickly, and pointed out in interviews with reporters that it was not an official follow-up but merely something he wanted to do. Mutations, with its slow ballads and country waltzes, launched the bossa nova–flavored single "Tropicalia" and achieved platinum status. Beck followed up with Midnight Vultures (1999), which borrows heavily from soul and funk. With Beck having covered just about every genre, critics wondered if he could keep up the impressive and exhaustive pace.

A Change of Pace

Following his breakup with his longtime girlfriend, Leigh Limon, Beck released the somber, beautiful, and introspective album Sea Change (2002), a musical diary of a journey through heartbreak. A mostly acoustic affair, with sad, wailing guitars, hollowed-out vocals, and lyrics loaded with themes of loss, Sea Change signals Beck's consistent versatility and proved he could be both sincere and ironic. Notable tracks include the tearjerkers "Guess I'm Doin' Fine" and "Lost Cause." Beck was uncertain as to whether or not he ought to release such a downtrodden set of tunes, but Sea Change was met with critical acclaim and positive sales, peaking at number eight on the Billboard Top 200 chart. It also landed in the number-two slot, behind Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, on the Village Voice Critics' Poll of the best albums of 2002.

Singer, songwriter, experimental genius, Beck made his mark in the mid-1990s with a cheeky hit but has grown into a skilled, versatile, and accomplished postmodern musician.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Mellow Gold (1994, DGC); Odelay! (DGC, 1996); Mutations (DGC, 1998); Midnight Vultures (DGC, 1999); Sea Change (DGC, 2002).

carrie havranek