With
so many greats in the world of music passing and so much new talent
coming from the Internet for their 15 minutes, it's fair to wonder
who will be the ones to adapt to the times and stay around to make a
life's worth of music. With much of the 90's crowd broken up,
re-branded or withered into obscurity, it may seem like Radiohead is
one of the only to continue to put out records whenever they want,
using whatever instruments they want and charging what they want. But
they wouldn't be alone because Beck has shown that he can go from
country, to rock and roll, funk, and create records that ebb and flow
with the emotional current of tears.
Breaking
out with “Looser,” Beck created an anthem for the disenfranchised
youth of suburban America with a catchy chorus, rapped verse and a
drum sample from “I Walk on Guilded Splinters,” by Johnny
Jenkins. Shortly after “Loser,” his record Odelay would
get the Grammy for best alternative music performance and earn him
respect that would be sustained when Morning Phase was
given Grammy of the Year, despite having the lowest sales numbers of
any record in its category. With its soft drums, echo-chamber vocals
and atmospheric approach that answered what it would sound like if
Cocteau
Twins produce an
alt-country
record, Morning Phase
repeated themes from Sea Change
but in a way that was new and worked more cohesively song to song.
Since
then, Beck has released two singles. In June of 2015, the funky song
“Dreams” came out with a sound that caught the drift of MGMT so
closely that it would have come
off as plagiary if it wasn't
such a perfect piece of cotton candy pop. Now,
Beck takes on the ubiquitous
sound of modern party pop-rap built
around a minimal amount of looped samples, rapped verse and
enthusiastic chorus. On
paper, it sounds as odd and uncharacteristic as “Dreams,” but
goddamnit if Beck doesn't show
Iggy Azalea, Nikki Manaj and
all the other twitter-feuding rap/pop personalities how to do it
right.
It's
hard to miss Beck's sense of humor when listening to the lyrics of
songs in Odelay and
Midnight Vultures.
Because of that, it's impossible to know if he's seriously interested
in making music in different styles or if he's just deconstructions
the skeleton of modern sounds to see if he can't build a better one.
From the very beginning, a tone that travels like a slide whistle
makes a listener wonder if it's Beck or some weird joke. The
slide whistle loops, a kick drum comes in and Beck's “Giddy Up,
Giddy Up” queues a drum roll and click track beat for the whistle
to spin around. Then,
Beck starts to rap all over
it all: “Wanna
move into a fool's gold room/With my pulse on the animal jewels/Of
the rules that you choose to use to get loose/With the luminous
moves/Bored of these limits, let me get, let me get it like,”
before the repeated chorus of: Wow!/It's like right now/It's like
wow!”
By
the time the second verse/set
of bars
finish with “Standing on the lawn doin' jiu jitsu/Girl in a bikini
with the Lamborghini shih tzu,” it's
obvious Beck still has his sense of humor. Soon, the
chorus's “it's like wow” becomes the only appropriate reaction to
the song itself because you realize Beck's
doing what he
does best, works
around genres, in spite of their
limitations and with their clichés,
which he includes with an uplifting message that turns the song into
summer anthem gold: “It's your life/You gotta try to get it
right/Look around, don't forget where you came from/It's just another
perfect night/We're gonna take it around the world.”
Is
Beck playing with styles that people would never guess interest him
for the fun of? Is he focused on creating one summer hit after the
other? Is he just seeing if he can change with the
times?
It's
unclear. What is for certain is that Beck doesn't seem to be slowing
down and doesn't have any trouble keeping up with the rest of the air
waves.
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