Beck's
Lyrics
By Disco Stu - Editor in
Chief : Issue 3, Vol. I
 What's
in a name?
Ah, Beck...that critically acclaimed musician has
been compared to legendary song writer Bob Dylan.
However, Beck Hansen fuses his music together
with the sounds of hip-hop, blues, classic rock,
country and much more. The result is a funky
blend of music-istical goodness. But if one takes
a deeper look into his music, one will find that
some of his lyrics don't make any sense. It's
true. Let's take a look at what goes on in his
music, shall we?
Let's start with
the titles of some of his songs. The title's of
Beck's songs are as varied as music itself. Some
are deceptively simple ("Beer Can,"
"Cupcake," "Steve Threw Up,"
"Twig") while others demand deeper
thought ("Blackfire Choked Our Death,"
"She is All (Gimme Something to Eat),"
"Electric Music and The Summer People").
Some of the titles seem melancholy and sad
("Sucker Without a Brain," "Soul
Sucked Dry," "Nobody's Fault but My Own"),
while others are just plain profane ("Jack-ass,"
"Asshole," "I Feel Like a Piece of
Shit"). Beck's song's also deal with sex and
drugs ("Fume," "Sexx Laws,"
"People Gettin' Busy," "MTV Makes
Me Wanna Smoke Crack"). A person can easily
see, however, that most of his song title are
just plain odd ("Satan Gave Me a Taco,"
"Aphid Manure Heist," Nicotine and
Gravy").
But who cares
about the titles, right? What we really want to
know is why his lyrics don't make sense. You, say,
however, that his lyrics aren't that
weird. Oh, really? I'll take a look at three of
his songs and you can judge for yourself whether
they're bizarre or not.
Loser
I'll start off with Beck's first bonafide hit,
"Loser." The song starts off with a toe-tapping
guitar riff and segues into a monotone Beck
singing, "In the time of chimpanzees I was a
monkey/Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the
junkie/With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint
vegetables/Dog food stalls with the beefcake
pantyhose."
Uh, yeah.
The song goes on
like this with the catchy chorus coming in the
middle and at the end of the song: "Soy un perdedor/I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill
me?" But let's check the other lyrics, just
to make sure if there is any theme to the song at
all. After the first chorus ends, the song
continues with Beck singing, "Forces of evil
in a bozo nightmare/Ban all the music with a
phony gas chamber/'Cause one's got a weasel and
the other's got a flag/One's on the pole, shove
the other in a bag." After a few more lines,
Beck goes through the chorus again and eventually
ends the song. If you look at the previous lyric,
there doesn't seem to be any relation at all.
There seems to be one obvious theme though: they're
both nonsensical.
Where It's
At
Yet another one of Beck's hits, "Where It's
At" was released in 1996 as a single off his
album, Odelay!. While making this
particular song, a few of the producers of the
album decided to mess around and use an 1970s
recording of a sex education tape called "Where
It's At." In fact, you can actually hear a
person from that recording saying "What
about those who swing both ways? AC-DC's?"
Along with another recording of a someone saying
"I got two turn tables and a microphone,"
the two recordings provided Beck with most of the
chorus for this song.
And here's another
factoid about "Where It's At": it only
took Beck 10 minutes to write the lyrics for this
song. And it certainly shows. Check out the first
stanza after the first chorus: "Pick
yourself up off the side of the road/With your
elevator bones and your whip-flash tones/Members
only hypnotizers/Move through the room like
ambulance drivers/Shine your shoes with you
microphone blues/Hirsutes with your parachute
fruits/Passing the dutchie from coast to coast/Like
my man Gary Wilson rocks the most."
Well, at least it's
a good song.
The Little
Drum Machine Boy
This song is just plain odd. The beginning of the
song is distorted and has a repeating background
theme with someone chanting "Barukh Atah
Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha-Olam." As you can
see, the song has a Jewish theme to it. After
rapping his way though the song and mentioning
things like "hannukah science," "hannukah
pimp," and "bar mitzvah," the
background chants "His eminence is gay."
Where the hell did that come from? The
song ends with Beck saying "Hannukah Pimp"
about 20 times.
Okay. I gotcha.
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