Essay, Research Paper: Beck's Music

Beck's Music
Essay submitted by Adam Harvey

Music is central to my life. Without music, the world would be naked, cold, and quiet.
Music can set the rhythm for a long day of work, the mood for a date, for a party, for
your whole life. It can wrap you in a blanket of comfort when you are lonely, or inspire
you when you are down. Music is a vehicle for expressing love, telling a story, or
showing happiness. My love for music has grown immensely throughout the past few
years and continues to grow without bounds. Playing musical instruments, such as the
piano and guitar, has deepened my appreciation for the sounds I hear when I listen to
music. From personal experience playing in concerts and writing my own songs, I have
captured the views of both sides of music's artistic prism: creation and presentation.
Creation, I have learned, can be a tremendously tedious task. It involves much more
than perseverance and determination. Creating music requires the harmonious
articulation of one's feelings and thoughts through instrumental or vocal sounds. There
is no one who accomplishes the feat more cleverly than Beck.

Beck Hansen, known as Beck, is a musical genius who performs an unparalleled, funky,
and melodic music style. At the age of 29, he has produced six full albums and will soon
be releasing his seventh. Beck has become an inspirational icon among rising musicians
and has defied the classification system of musical genres. Much disagreement has
arisen over what kind of music it is that Beck performs, but the resistance to
classification is what makes it unique. He merges coinciding genres, such as
psychedelic hip-hop, folk, rap, and country, to define his own genre. Beck's dynamic
music adjusts to the latest musical trends and builds off of talent from past
generations. Like a catfish feeding on the bottom of a lake, Beck's music feeds off of
the styles of other successful musician, such as Bob Dylan and The Beastie Boys.
However, this does not mean that Beck is a copycat artist. It means that his music is
based on a collaboration of the sounds of the world, and this makes his music very
diversified. Beck is one of the most original musicians of all time, and to classify him as
anything but a genius would be even more absurd than Beck himself. He is always
"courting cultural disaster, and part of his genius is that he's always on the verge of
making a complete ass of himself"(Rotundi).

Beck Hansen was born in 1970 in Los Angeles . Twenty-nine years later he has become
one of the most revered musicians of the '90s. The harsh street life of Los Angeles
made Beck realize the importance of what most people take for granted, such as the
voluptuous emotions we feel regardless of our social status. In the song, "Lord only
knows," from the album, O'Delay, Beck expresses his view of how life should be lived,
appreciatively. The beginning of the song reads:
You only got one finger left
And it's pointing at the door
And you're taking for granted
What the Lords laid on the floor

Beck's family was very supportive of him while he explored his musical talent during his
teen years. They provided him with a free spirited, "semi-bohemian environment" that
promoted an artistic and creative lifestyle (Hindin). His mother, Bibbie Hansen, was in
one of Andy Warhol's clique of "Superstars" when she was only 13, and spent her life as
a musician and actress. Beck's father, David Campell, taught Beck a great deal about
music. David Campell was a well-known street musician who wrote string arrangements
for esteemed bands, including Aerosmith. Perhaps the most highly influential member of
his family, however, was Al Hansen, Beck's grandfather. He was a postmodern artist
who took part in the founding the FluXus movement, the most radical art movement of
the 1960s (Hindin). In 1998, Beck and his grandfather worked together to create a
visual art exhibit called "Playing with Matches." This exhibit focused on artwork created
from garbage, such as cigarette-butt sculptures and Hershey wrapper collages. Working
with "junk" is Beck's greatest talent. Beck can be seen as an Alchemist who transforms
junk into art, or as he says in the song, "We live again," turn "shit to gold." His methods
of creating art, visual and audible, may be absurd, but they are honest and innovative
and that is what makes it genius.

Beck's frustrations with conforming to the rigid structure of high school caused him to
drop out by 9th grade. After his separation from a conformist learning environment,
Beck took up a succession of clerical level jobs. Unfortunately, he found these jobs to
be too structured as well, and was fired for not following dress codes. Fortunately, he
found condolence with a guitar, at age 16. He then began to study musicians, including
famous blues and folk legends Woody Guthrie and Mississippi John Hart (Peabody). His
love for the guitar soon led him to playing at local bars and parties.

By 1994, Beck had released his first album, Mellow Gold, which included his hit song,
"Loser." This slacker anthem hit appealed to the apathetic views of Generation-X'ers
and basked Beck in airtime on radio stations and MTV elevating him to a new level:
mainstream artist. This is when I first took notice of Beck's talent. I found his lyrics and
music style to be interestingly absurd and different from all of the other bands of the
time. Despite Beck's newfound stardom gained from his popular album, Mellow Gold, he
did not turn into a showbiz sellout, and create music for the sole purpose of making
money. The next two albums, One Foot in the Grave and O'Delay, proved to the world
that Beck was not a one-hit wonder. In fact, O'Delay was Grammy award winning
platinum album. It was an album of full of alchemy; turning hackneyed sampling styles,
tired rap beats, and folk guitar styles into fresh, new-fangled sounding music, flooded
with poetic imagery about seizing life while you can and working with what you have.

Clearly, Beck Hansen is a musical mastermind. His postmodern artistic talent for turning
"shit into gold" has made him a success. It will be exciting to see what Beck has done
next in his subsequent album, Midnite Vultures, which is expected to come out
sometime in late November. According to a review of Beck's new album in CMJ, a music
review magazine, "The one overriding element of this record is the embracing of
sexuality in all its colors, from fuchsia to chromium (Rotondi)."

To fully understand Beck and his absurdity you must willingly listen to his lyrics with an
open mind, and then, I hope, you will begin to appreciate the genius that lies behind
the cherubic, adolescent face of Beck.