So why is Beck’s Mellow Gold on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
As a writer and a lover of language – and of comedy and the absurd – I’m obsessed with endlessly playing around with words and concepts.
A few decades back, I augmented the word “clever” to come up with the word clevar, which basically means “extra clever.” To be clear, it is desirable to be clevar; to be clevar is to be divine in my book.
With that backdrop in mind, it’ll make more sense to you when I relay something that I jotted down about Mellow Gold during the nine-month research phase of compiling this here best 1,000 albums ever: I noted that it is perhaps Beck’s funniest and most clevar album that he’s produced to date.
Now, this is certainly a topic worthy of debating and exploring to be sure. Casting aside the collection of Beck’s more “serious” albums (Sea Change and Morning Phase most prominently, but also throw in Modern Guilt, Mutations, and Colors into this camp), Beck among other things packs a great deal of irony, shtick, homage, and hints of satire into much of his output, most notably on Odelay, The Information, Stereopathetic Soulmanure, Guero, Midnight Vultures, and Mellow Gold.
I’d argue in fact that clevar is the conceptual glue that holds Mellow Gold together most, the very thing that helped convey to the Gen X masses (of which I’m a card carrying member) that Beck was far more than a one-hit wonder – the “Loser” guy – and in fact he offered a rich array, an ocean of musical slights of hand and word ninja artistry that would play out over the next 30 years and counting*.
* What’s even more astonishing here of course is that while Mellow Gold is credited as Beck’s debut on a major label (DGC Records), the bizarro/wonderful Stereopathetic Soulmanure and the folk grunge masterpiece that is One Foot in the Grave were BOTH also released in the very same year of 1994.
Here’s how our old friend/frenemy, the snarky Stephen Thomas Erlwine of All Music infamy, views Mellow Gold:
Throughout the record, Beck plays as if there are no divisions between musical genres, freely blending rock, rap, folk, psychedelia, and country. Although his inspired sense of humor occasionally plays like he’s a smirking, irony-addled hipster, his music is never kitschy, and his wordplay is constantly inspired.
So while Erlwine, forever seeking to take away credit with one hand while giving with the other in even his most praise-giving reviews (of which this is certainly one), I’d frame Beck’s “smirking, irony addled hipster” vibe as strength throughout Mellow Gold.
Now, let’s go back to “Loser,” the song that introduced most of us – myself included – to Beck. I thought it was a fun and clever (this was the pre-clevar era, mind) if not extraordinary track, and still view it the same way.
In fact, Odelay was the first Beck album that I ever purchased (this was pre-streaming era, kids!) and therefore became my true entry point into his kaleidoscopic and fantastic world of music.
Therefore, by the time I fully focused on Mellow Gold, it was the early 2000s and I had by that time already moved to California and started dating my now wife. I mention this because I mostly closely associate the album with that era and especially driving back and forth from San Francisco’s East Bay to SoCal to visit my future in-laws in Orange County.
In fact, I can specifically recall the simple road trip curation move of starting out on Track 2, the gloriously strange and slightly trippy “Pay No Mind (Snoozer),” therefore bypassing “Loser” completely.
Oh, and you want to know more about what I mean by clevar? Dig this, my friends:
Give the finger to the rock n roll singer
As he’s dancing upon your pay check
The sales climb high through the garbage pail sky
Like a giant dildo crushing the sun
To this day, “Pay No Mind” reminds me of driving around California’s suburbs, the Forever Quest to get to the 5 or the Million Mile stretch of Rosecrans to get to Fullerton.
Then there’s the even rollicking, boozed out road trip classic that is “Fuckin With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock),” and I must insert here that I’m a huge fan of Beck’s bizarro non-sequiturs that he stuffs into song titles via parentheses.
Anyway, if there’s a better song than “Fuckin With My Head” for driving the zillion miles of I-5 and passing tractor trailer after tractor trailer on route, I’m open to hear about it.
“Convoy,” maybe?
Drank my coffee with a hubcap… yeah!
That’s the essence of clevar right there.
And now that we’re on the theme of truck driving, I must of course fast forward a few tracks to what might be the single weirdest Beck track of all (and that’s saying something): the magnificently cracked slice of (meth addled, hard livin’, truck drivin’) in the form of “Truckdrivin’ Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat).”
Having always been interested in the background of this song, I tracked down one of the more extraordinary findings I can recall stumbling across:
Beck introduced “Truckdrivin'” in concert on March 25 1997 by calling it a “true-life song. This is urban tragedy. This is a 1990s gothic tale of a duo, of tragedy and self-abuse. Not to be exploited. Not to be frowned down on. Just to be heard.”
As this implies, this song takes its inspiration from a very true, ugly story. Fortunately Beck finds a bit of humor in it all, but it still is somewhat frightening. Beck explains, “It was a real experience. I wouldn’t have written a song like that. I was shook up, ’cause two fellows, they were very abusive and they were living right below you, so it impinges on your life and I can hear them all day and finally they had a huge brawl.”
The opening sample is of that very fight, and that’s where the story begins. Beck recalls, “When I was recording the song in my living room and they were out front screaming at each other and I couldn’t…I had to stop recording my song. And it was strange because I was recording the music for the song; I hadn’t written words yet. And I couldn’t record anymore because they were too loud and I just left. I had to leave ’cause it was too hectic. When I came back I had all this…I had the song and then after they had this argument…it’s too bad I lost the tape that has the original argument ’cause the argument went on for 40 minutes. It was unbelievable. I put 2 seconds of it on there. Pretty classic. But somebody out there has it.” Another time Beck calls it “a special tape, filled with horrible things that will destroy your destiny if you know what it is.”
“Beercan” showcases Beck at that exquisite junction of rap and hippie jam and rock, layered with irony but most of all an abiding sense of fun. The lyrics on this one are just out of control great, meaningless and evocative and yet impossibly creating a greater whole.
I’m being absolutely serious here in conveying that song lyrics don’t get better than this in my book:
I quit my job blowing leaves, telephone bills up my sleeves
Choking like a one-man dustball, freedom rock slimeball talking in code
“Nitemare Hippie Girl” might be Beck at both his most direct and his most satirical, a mode he’d essentially never return to in future. On top of being a great acoustic grunge number, it paints a hyper-specific (and hilarious) portrait of a few people I knew back at the dorms of Binghamton University.
Some stats & info about Beck – Mellow Gold
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Dance Music, Alternative Pop, Rock Music, Pop Music, Country Rock, Punk Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Mellow Gold released? 1994
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #45 out of 1,000
Beck’s Mellow Gold on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Beck’s Mellow Gold that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Soy un perdedor.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.