Tribute to: Beck

I have been a Beck man for what's now over half of my life, considering I just turned 29 and Mellow Gold dropped in '93. The one cool thing I've found with fellow Beck fans is that everyone has their own favorite album from him, which makes total sense considering everything he's done explores so many genres that it's hard to pinpoint one single, definitive piece of work. For me, it's Mutations. It has the anti-folk creativity of Odelay with the emotion of Sea Change, and the latter happens to be my second favorite. So here's a tribute to one of my favorite solo artists ever for the holidays via several of my favorite tracks:

My favorite track off Mutations. It's the closer which then heads off into a hidden track, but this one is classic Beck just singing his fucked up heart out in that mellow style that he's perfected.


Midnite Vultures is an awesome record. If you mixed up Barry White, Prince, and Beck, you'd get this album. This album shows off how much Beck knows his shit because when you think about it, the whole thing probably shouldn't have worked at all.


My favorite track off Odelay.


I think The Information has gotten better since it's been released. I know it's only been 3 and 1/2 years, but humor me. Guero was one of his bigger successes in a long time and everyone expected him to release something else genre-exploring, when in reality he released what was a collection of songs that probably could have fit into a sequel to Odelay that people would have been perfectly happy with at that time. The Information, to me, isn't as much of a whole album as some of his others, but it's still a damn good collection of songs and this is one of my favorites.


Sea Change is a hard album for me to listen to sometimes. After a bad breakup, I turned to this album right after and just kind of immersed myself in the lyrics. As corny as it sounds, I guess it helped somewhat. Songs like "Lost Cause" and "It's All in Your Mind," which would probably be considered incredibly depressing to most, let me know that at least this wasn't anything out of the ordinary that I was going through. Anyways, this particular song I listened to quite a bit. I absolutely love the video and I think it's one of the best songs ever written about heartbreak.