“In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
butane in my veins and I’m out to cut the junkie
with the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables
dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose”
– Beck: “Loser” off of Mellow Gold (1994)
Beck being Beck
Please, do not spend a lot of time attempting to decipher the lyrics above. “Loser,” multi-instrumentalist Beck Hansen’s most popular hit, is a string of somewhat unintelligible poetry that provides no apparent pattern or lyrical rhythm. It is the definition of complete musical entropy. Beck’s perplexing lyric is a wave of wonderful randomness and that is what makes it awesome. Yes, you heard it hear first. Sometimes there is just no meaning.
Now, do not get the idea that all of Beck’s lyrics are an odd mixture of random words and phrases picked out of a grand hat. “Loser” is just an example of an experimental lyric. The regurgitated words come together and form a hugger-mugger. A jumbled mass of images set to an acoustic slide and callisthenics in a graveyard. It is Beck, the idiosyncratic music master, at his very finest.
Beck was born in Los Angeles, California to musician David Campbell and former Andy Warhol “Star” and visual artist, Bibbe Hansen. After his parents separated, he chose to stay in Los Angeles with his mother where he was introduced to a burgeoning hip-hop scene and with his mother’s art crowd. His influences were beyond diverse and he caught much of his parent’s talents.
Beck dropped out of high school (like so many musicians) in the mid-1980’s and took a tour of Europe, honing his musical skill through busking. He eventually found his way into the anti-folk movement of New York City in the late-1980’s and was further inspired. After returning to Los Angeles, he started taking several dead-end jobs before finally recording. His first official single was released in 1993 on Flipside Records.”MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack” remains one of my favorite Beck songs. It combines hilarious social criticism with true frustration. It is real and I always respected that about Beck.
“mtv makes me wanna smoke crack
fall out of the window and I’m never comin back
mtv makes me wanna get high
can’t get a ride no matter how I try
and everything’s perfect
and everything’s bright
and everyone’s perky
and everyone’s uptight
I love those videos
I watch ’em all day”
– Beck: “MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack”
Beck opens the song with these lyrics. He depicts the fraudulence of MTV. “Everyone’s perfect,” delineates Beck’s annoyance at the sitcom-like nature of the artificial music videos of the time. It has further expanded into the deceiving programming that currently makes the MTV network the true trash of television. Beck anticipated its arrival.
“Loser”
“MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack”
The Music Court 
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