I met you...at JC POLLney - ILM Artist Poll #97 - BECK - the Results Thread

https://i.imgur.com/zItRSdr.jpg
18. Girl
From: Guero
Single Released: 4 July 2005 (UK)
340 Points, 11 Votes

a jump in points.

one of the best Guero tracks for sure

i had to make room on my ballot for "Girl," i just had to.

The music video for "Girl" was directed by Motion Theory.

In the video, Beck gets a limousine advertisement entitled "Lester's Big Ass Limousines...Moving Party For Hire" which folds to become "Less Is More". Later on, Beck is in a pharmacy, buying an over-the-counter drug. When he is looking at it, the walls and floor fold, making a skull with red eyes on the shelves and a sign above that saying "Side Effects: Death". The next fold is at what seems to be a garage sale. There is a painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall, which then folds. In the foreground, two toy cars have been folded together. Beck is seen later on in the video driving the car that looks like the car that this fold makes. The next fold takes place on a sidewalk, where a little girl is doing a chalk drawing. She sets down the chalk and walks away, the side walk folds and it takes the form of human outline, with police and the yellow tape around it. The fold after this one is a homeless person begging on the corner when Beck is driving by. The man holds a sign in his hand which says "Loose Change OK Allan's Anyway". The man proceeds to fold the sign, which now reads "Look Away". Later in the video, a sign is folded together to form the words "Where It's At" with 2 records and a microphone, which is in reference to the Beck song of the same name.

The 1972 El Camino Beck is driving in the video has the license plate "3CK 61RL".

MAD references in the video
When Beck is looking at the TV, when the screen's image folds in it says "Al Jaffee", and at the very end where he sits on the bench, the fold-in reveals an Alfred E. Neuman smile. The very use of fold-in scenes is itself a tribute to MAD, which features a fold-in on the back inside cover of every issue.

listening now to remind myself - it's an effective pop song

HEYYYYY MASONNA GIRL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylDuOmEoZx0

A word about the chorus is necessary. Initially, we had a report of a song called "Summer Girl." Then when the unmastered version of Guero leaked, we matched it to this song, naturally. Only thing was, Beck doesn't really sound like he's singing "summer girl." So, confusion.

Then when Guero was officially announced, the title was changed "Girl." Clearly, that's an inferior title to "Summer Girl," so fans were baffled. Or at least I was. Anyway, we still weren't sure what the chorus was! Beck.com confirms that the early name of the song was indeed "Summer Girl," but it's fairly clear now that is not the chorus.

Beck led us on, as in the liner notes of the album, the chorus is printed as "My...girl." Like that, ellipses and everything. Thanks Beck.

So now we're stuck with lots of theories until someone can straight-up ask Beck, and gets a real answer in return. I'm kind of feeling that it's "cyanide girl" from listening to a bootleg or two; it fits the lyrics, imo. Since this is my site, that's what I'm putting in the lyrics above. Others hear "sun-eyed," or "sinner," or even "cyan eyed." Also one theory is that it's "Masonna girl." Some probably still hear "summer."

UPDATE: Beck was finally asked by a journalist about the lyrics. He's not talking. Neither is his keyboardist, Brian LeBarton, by the way. This is what was written:

Equally unclear is the chorus to Beck's current single, "Girl," a lovely summertime jam which appears to be about killing a girl. In the Guero liner notes, the lyric is written as "Hey, my ... Girl," and Beck isn't about to fill in that ellipsis. In fact, in traditional Beck style, he's claiming that the whole thing is the result of a stream-of-consciousness, off-the-cuff ad lib. Which he decided to leave in, since it fit with the song's overall vibe.

"In the studio I was just vocalizing, 'cause I have the melody but hadn't written the lyrics. Sometimes when I have the microphone I just make up words and I try to go with what sounds good. So that was just me improvising, and we ended up leaving it like that. So what you hear is basically the first time I recorded it," Beck said. "It's kind of a love song, mixed in with some grit and some mystery. Using different words and images to describe the feeling. It's a raggedy love song."

"my sonar girl" - the song is sung from the perspective of a blind man who uses his partner's high-pitched clicks and squeaks to echolocate his way around

https://i.imgur.com/Nz5k3EW.jpg
17. Steal My Body Home
From: Mellow Gold
Released: March 1, 1994
341 Points, 10 Votes, 1 Number One

There it is, my #1. Goes from awesome terrifying freaked-out horror-psych Americana to...junkyard carnival party grinning insanity, seamlessly, and it's like that bone becoming a spaceship, it's perfect. Sweet dreams!

great choice for a number one, seems like a imago pick. :-)

it has all the qualities of great literature in the music, let alone the words! it finds some fundamental quality of human darkness! well done Beck!

from YouTube:

I'm surprised the story has been lost that this is a reworking of "In the pines" by Leadbelly, from the point of view of the headless body.

He mentions losing his head under the train wheels, he mentions the pines, and the song finishes with him playing the chords to the original song.

Almost my number one. I love when he busts out the sitar. Good description imago. It almost feels like some kind of thesis statement for the whole album - rustic mardi gras emerging from futuristic bleakness

whoa @ that youtube comment o_0

Do not understand the love for all these Sea Change and Mellow Gold tracks

YEAH THAT'S MY SHIT

The change-up on this song is amazing

I'll never understand how any Beck fan doesn't "get" Mellow Gold.

https://i.imgur.com/7EAY0c1.jpg
16. Deadweight
From: A Life Less Ordinary Soundtrack
Released: October 27, 1997 (UK)
358 Points, 12 Votes

i forgot all about this song despite having the CD single.

yay I voted for this, a great one-off single

love the lounge vibe

and the organ parts

From Whiskeyclone:

Beck has mentioned that this song was a part of his "Brazilian trilogy" (along with "Tropicalia" and I guess later on "Missing"). Unlike "Tropicalia," which is a bossa nova song, "Deadweight" uses its Brazilian influence more as part of a larger funky brew. Beck is almost a one-man band here, playing bass, keyboards, drum machine, and all the guitars; though the scratching is uncredited, it was most likely one of the Dust Brothers. Nonetheless, it's a stunning recording, and rates high among Beck's best songs. As Beck said in USA Today (July 11 1996), "I'm trying to get to a place where this merging of styles is so fluent and natural that you don't notice the different snippets, a musical consciousness where there's no preconceived ideas." With "Deadweight," I think he got there.

TOO LOW!

Somehow I still have this soundtrack. At the time "Deadweight" probably helped my young brain make the transition from Odelay to Mutations.

I like Mellow Gold fine but it is what it is, a relatively half-assed debut album powered by a justifiably huge hit single, a couple other decent songs, and a bunch of hastily slapped together filler

so wrong

I don't think that's even accurate? Beck had like multiple albums worth of material at that point

yeah the "filler" is on Stereopathetic, where it actually works

but hey I don't like Mutations or Sea Change, people clearly see very different things in this guy's work

mellow gold is a coherent and inspired artistic statement

He had several albums worth of material cuz he was going for quantity over quality and had a very low bar for what he considered worthy of release ie noize jams w no ideas, endless lyrics that were just lists of food products etc

noize jams w no ideas, endless lyrics that were just lists of food products etc

you say those like they're bad things

also Spanking Room and Steve Threw Up weren't LP tracks

Everything he does is TO TRY TO FUCK YOU UP!!!

'94 BECK is just not for all tastes. No big wup.

Steve Threw Up was very high on my ballot btw

https://i.imgur.com/W1LxWNV.jpg
15. Cold Brains
From: Mutations
Single Released: 1 March 1999 (UK)
361 Points, 12 Votes

So I def think there’s great tracks from that period, just that there’s a lot of crap too

Xp

Initially, "Cold Brains" was meant for the sequel album to One Foot in the Grave, but when that never happened, Beck rescued it for Mutations. It's always been a relatively simple and pretty folk song, but for the album, it was decorated into one of the finest recordings he's made. Beck himself played all the guitars, harmonica, a little piano, and even some glockenspiel.

Uncharacteristically, the lyrics remained pretty much unchanged from the first known version in June 1996, through until the recorded version in March 1998. The prevailing image in "Cold Brains" is death. A more specific interpretation would be the death of inspiration, writer's block. To a prolific songwriter like Beck, what could be worse?

The first verse begins with an evocative, rhythmic description of his current state of mind: "unmoved, untouched, unglued." He is struggling with creating, his brains are cold, he has "no thoughts, no mind." The next verse goes further in describing his unsuccessful attempts at finding inspiration. Here, he describes inspiration as a "field of green," he longs for it. Unfortunately, he is on the gravel. Even with a "worm of hope," he still fails ("a hangman's rope pulls me one way or the other").

The last verse is the most depressing. All the unsuccessful attempts have ended up quieting the "bird of song," and is most likely a self-reference to the singer himself. Most shocking is the conclusion that "it doesn't matter": to the writer? to fans who will just move on? This is quite the existential question for a creative writer.

When Beck was asked about the bleakness of "Cold Brains" (and most of Mutations), he said he actually found the lyrics to be funny.
I don't know. I think of it as mostly playful, but then I think Leonard Cohen is a humorous song writer. In "Cold Brains" when I say, "The fields of green are obscene and I lay upon the gravel," (sic) there's just this demented auto-erotica that I think is hilarious. It's not meant to necessary bring anybody down or bum anybody out.
And in that sense, he's right. While "Cold Brains" is not a light-hearted song (the images throughout are quite bleak), it is not a bummer or overly depressing about the situation. (Maybe a little.)

Beck explains it this way, "I think there's a certain world-weariness to the record, but I just think of it as being part of the condition of our whole way of living. I don't know anybody who doesn't reach a point of exhaustion on a regular basis. We don't know how to live anymore." On "Cold Brains," he explores what it's like to reach that point.

And my #3! This one's simply a banger. Amazing tune, lovely production. When I was 16 this was my favourite song of all time :)

Steve Threw Up was very high on my ballot btw

haha awesome, I don't think it made mine but I do love it. I see yr point I just think MG is way more consistent than you're giving it credit for.

Haha yeah I actually like Steve Threw Up a lot too. It's true he did record joke songs, novelty songs, tossed off goofs and etc, but he also clearly knew the difference - its not an accident that Steve Threw Up isn't on Mellow Gold

Cold Brains is such a jam - one of those ballads thats secretly a stadium anthem

amazing how a piece of shit like A Life Less Ordinary had a soundtrack with all-time greats for at least two acts (see also: Ash)

I really liked that Ash song too

"Girl" was the last time Inheard him on the radio iirc

Looks like Intergalactic Sonic 7"s has never been polled? I'd lose sleep over that.