Beck: Every Album, Every Song (On Track)

Arthur Lizie

Softcover | 14.8 x 1 x 21 cm | 160 pp

Sonicbond | 2023 | 9781789522587

The On Track series examines an artist’s entire output, track by track – or that within a specified date range – the series brings together expert analysis with both fact and opinion.

Beck Hansen has enjoyed three decades of success, creating an unprecedented variety of music across a labyrinth of releases that challenge conventions and push pop music boundaries. He’s been individually pigeonholed as folk, anti-folk, lo-fi, alternative, hip-hop, rock, R&B, rap, country, noise, dance-pop, and electronica – by critics of only one album. Mainly, he’s just Beck.

Beck’s free-range approach to music and art was fostered at an early age. His father is a classically trained musician, his mother lived life as art, and his grandfather was a central figure in the experimental Fluxus scene. Beck absorbed these influences, then dropped out of school at age 14 to forge his own path. Just nine years later, he became an ‘overnight success’ with the so-called slacker anthem ‘Loser’.

This book provides meticulous, chronological organisation to Beck’s seemingly overwhelming official recorded output, from the indie experimentation of Stereopathetic Soulmanure and One Foot in the Grave, through the commercial and critical heights of Odelay and Morning Phase, and into the mainstream successes of Guero, The Information, and Colors. Along the way, details of more than 300 songs include the expected (‘Where It’s At’), the underappreciated (‘Rental Car’), and the obscure (‘Brandon Nevins’).