FREE ESSAY ON BECK'S MUSIC

BECK'S MUSIC

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 *censored* 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
*censored* 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.