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Originally Posted by pepper_green
I like "sellout" Beck better than "take me serious" Beck. he's well past his Bowie 80's popstar faze so his best career move should just be to sell out more.
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I LOVE Odelay. It's just a great album, and it's great all the way through.
- I like Mellow Gold very much, but it's gotten old and I've had to "re-discover" it like twenty times now, and currently it's old again.
- I like The Information as a whole quite a bit... his last good "album"... but none of it is specifically great
That's all I'm inclined to listen to anymore. I don't actively dislike anything except for Modern Guilt and thatosy recent one... Morning View? The one that eats shit and is boring as hell. I like parts of Mindite Vultures very much, others not so much. Same with Mutations.
I loved One Foot in the Grave when I was young and indie-fried, but I haven't listened to it in a long time and have no real desire to. Some of Guero is good... couple songs.. most of it is shit Odelay rehash. Sea Change I can appreciate for its Bowie-isms and the ballsiness of the transition, but I don't think it was a genius offering by any means.
Odelay was the Paul's Boutique of the '90s. Gotta love it, really, no matter how much shit came later. It's a better record than 99% of artists make in their entire career, and it's one of the best albums of the alternative era. I can't hate on a dude who made a record like that, and who bent David Geffen over his knee and spanked his ass to take full advantage of the record deal and the increased popularity.
Also, there's Beck's connections with SY. He put a bit of EJST&NS into Odelay, and followed their lead a lot in his way in the mid-'90s. And he collaborated with Kim, and he did the split "Pay no Mind"/"Green light" single. So, there's that.
I DO think that he could have been more like SY, and helped other artists in his orbit get discovered, but he was too insular and single minded.
There are worse sellouts. Look at Modest Mouse. One of the best bands in the world crapped out bouncy feel-good pop after a decade of making meth'd out indie death guitar awesomeness about Trailor Trash and the lack of a God. And they became HUGE for a while. Fuck that man. They crapped all over themselves and never redeemed shit.
