If you asked me to write an imitation Beck song, there's no way I could confidently accomplish it. How he conceives, let alone constructs his songs is just beyond my sensibilities. I can really only just be a fan. Beck is possibly the single most accomplished musical creator of my generation, without anything near the publicity sense of a Radiohead or the insurgent appeal of a Nirvana. He is the synthesis of our greatest sounds – rock, soul, rap, folk, indie, sample, dance – and he inhabits the weirdest body possible, a skinny, scruffy, pale dude from a wacked-out California artistic family, whose mom was a Warhol girl and whose dad regularly provides symphonic scores on the many Beck albums.
His song forms are original, sprawling, and spontaneous-sounding. His instrumentation is constantly evolving, often thematic in usage. His lyrics are of high-order creativity and merit: they are constantly, obsessively inventive, at once ridiculous in immediate appearance and then naggingly significant and conscious if you begin to pay them any mind. His singing voice is one-of-a-kind but has also transformed over more than two decades, beginning as an ironic, mumbly yawl, then blossoming into a deep, resonant call. His many albums are each indelible conceptual demonstrations of new musical philosophies, a kaleidoscope of creative worlds bursting out over a bold, unprecedented career.
I feel lucky that the first of his songs to appear on this list is “Cellphone’s Dead,” one of my favorite favorites from one of his later albums, the impossibly underrated The Information, which is, along with Midnite Vultures, one of his great “fun” albums. It’s at once a sadistically rad dance song and a prophetic little chat about the dawning cellphone generation of 2006 and their struggle with immediacy. (This song came out one year before the first iPhone was released.)
Listen to what all goes on in this song…
The joyful opening, that chill Latin percussion clanging, voices “aah”ing, the fun synth strings… try to pick out all the instrumentation just in that one little section, how it all meshes into an air-tight whole. And then, it all blips away and we have the stark main groove – funk drum, synth bass – boop bip boop! It’s a pretty close homage to Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” but repurposed to plastic pop (elsewhere on this album, he takes a Stevie Wonder groove for a similar joyride).
But keep listening as Beck’s smooth rap comes in, hear the secret embellishments everywhere as the verses develop. Echoing clatters punctuating the snare beats during the bass rests. The entrance of a pseudo-serious piano melody. Flecks of digital noise. Sound-warped baby goo-goo talk, courtesy of Beck’s own child. It reminds of the “lion tamer” scene in Fellini’s 8½, where you almost don’t realize unseen stage hands are waving silky scarves randomly in front of the camera, bringing subconscious life to an already arresting shot.
The chorus. We go from Rap Beck to Singing Beck, because Beck is one of the most lethal dual threat vocalists to come on the scene - he has distinct, influential techniques in both schools of voice. Just a ghostly little descending melody here, with those echoing harmonies on the upper ends of the chords that he uses so well in many songs. The payoff line is delivered by a young girl, because why not?
Beck’s career is a charmed series of “why not?” moments working out to be defining quirks across dozens of songs.
The second verse starts, and while the first was about a need to hear fun music, the second descends on the cellphone people. You will never confuse Beck with Zach de la Rocha, but his views into modern failings are no less opinionated and part of what motivates his writing, even if they are expressed with more dash and flash. Beck is the kind of artist who throws out the term “S.O.S.” just as the song hits the triplet-beat that Morse code uses for the S.O.S. signal.
But here, as the dance song is well underway, everything takes a rest. The drums go. The bass pixelates out. Only the piano and a strange low drone remain. There is Beck chanting “Eye of the sun.” When the beat does return, it is the more canned drum sound from the intro section, plus a cello yawning long notes over a seemingly haphazard, bending series of chords. The song seems to be going off the rails, and this is something Beck songs often do: suddenly appear to lose all momentum and form. But we are not adrift.
The weird chord progression does eventually resolve and repeat. And as if rising from dark lake depths, more and more instruments bob up: bells, whistles, voices, chimes, strings, keyboards, hand drums, so many other noises. Here come “aah”ing voices, then “ooh”ing voices. The voices grow like vines, winding into harmonies that take everything over. You realize this is the climax, though nothing is punching you in the head to alert you. The music has gone from dance music to mind music, then it all blips out again, washed out by one last, distorted bass kick.
Where does a song of this sound and form come from? Where does the vision come from to conceive of it and then manage a roomful of musicians and technical experts towards its realization?
Beck Hanson.
For as long as we have him.