Beck had originally attempted to record "Debra" with the Dust Brothers for Odelay, but was either not happy with the recording, or felt it didn't fit on the album, or both. ("I thought it was too jokey," Beck once admitted.) But the song was a natural for the stage: "What happened is we started playing it live and it became the centerpiece of the whole set. It was the song that people would react to more than the songs that they'd heard on the radio. So we kept playing it and playing it." It took on a life of its own, and the energy that was breathed into the song was clearly noted. "I think its life began as being tongue-in-cheek and silly, but somewhere along the way, like the way we performed it every night, it acquired some other dimensions," Beck explained. When Beck put together the Deluxe version of Odelay in 2006, he mentioned including the original recording of "Debra" as a bonus treat. However, it did not end up there: whether he could not find it or what happened to it, I do not know. Hopefully, he still has it and it can be released sometime.
Anyway, after playing the song live for a few years, Beck went and recorded the song again for Midnite Vultures. In fact, I would not be surprised if the live success of "Debra" drove the direction of Vultures: both the song and album are melanges of soul, funk, humor.
Still, in many ways, the album version does not compare to the excitement of live versions, which could and would go off on tangents on Beck and the band's whims. Nonetheless, "Debra" still shows off many dimensions, including Beck's "seventeen-octave vocal range," his humor, his natural ability with melody, his ease at absorbing influence. The song, as often thought, isn't a mockery either, but a tongue-in-cheek ode to the R&B phenomenon. Maybe it was borne as a bit of a joke, but it ended up more a tribute. As Beck explained, "It's fascinating to me, these guys singing R&B with a very sweet, smooth groove, but they're singing about how they want to get some girl's panties off and do them real good. Very explicit, but very sensitive at the same time. It's a really weird juxtaposition." Musical juxtaposition is basically Beck's main goal (especially on Midnite Vultures), so the song fits perfectly.
"Debra" has grown a lot over the years. One constant (besides the lyrics) is the skanky bass riff, which was lifted from a Ramsey Lewis track called "My Love For You" on his album Funky Serenity. On record, Justin Meldal-Johnsen plays the lick on his upright. I have a feeling that David Bowie's own Vultures-soul record, Young Americans, was a big influence on the sound here, especially the song "Win." Beck has mentioned numerous times R. Kelly's song, "I Like The Crotch On You" being an inspiration, and lo and behold, one of the first lines of that song is "I wanna get with you." Not there originally, the "Lovely lady / Girl you drive me crazy" coda developed on stage, and was lifted in from Kool Keith's "Lovely Lady." Beck of course uses all of these as launching points for his own tale of seduction, and over time, it surely has become one of the classics of Beck's career.
― Bee OK, Friday, 7 June 2019 22:16 (seven years ago)