[How important are lyrics to your songs?] "I have a two-fold relationship: On one hand they're incredibly important. On the other hand they shouldn't be important at all. It's like y'know drawing a picture that has some balence to it. You don't want to give it too much detail or you'll just get caught up in the details but at the same time you don't want it just to be a blur."
I have a great fondness for Beck's lyrics. They're no where near the usual cheesiness and cliche we're so used to in mainstream music. He has his own sense of what can and can't be done and pulls it off in a personnal masterpiece each time. Prehaps this is due to the influence of his grandfather (Al Hansen) and his strange and bold work. Or it could just be that Beck is a genious and it comes out of him automatically.
My favorite school assignment was analyzing 5 of Beck's songs for my OAC (Ontario Academic Credit - or grade 13) English course. This has lead me to look at many of his other songs.
My goal here is to define and analyze every single word in all of Beck's songs, to understand them better. This does not mean that everything I come up with is what Beck meant it to mean, but I hope that it comes close.
Laugh, yell, discuss - I hope everyone enjoys my effort.
This summary of my work is nowhere near completion, nor do I believe it ever will be - as long as Beck continues to write.
I also believe that the written form of Beck's music is nowhere near as wonderful as his music. Go buy one of his albums now!
Input from others is always welcome.
For now, the only available analyzed songs are:
November 14, 2000: A way back in June 2000 this girl Danielle sent me a bunch of her own Beck analyzations that she did for a school project. I've finally decided to post them. Soon I'll put my own notes in with them.
Anyway, the analyzations were for these songs:
November 18, 2000: I found a nice parallelism of Nicotine & Gravy with someone's life.
December 28th, 2000: Put up a little explaination in Debra
And of course, a BIG thanks to Bek David Campbell / Beck Hansen (truly THE Enchanting Wizard of Rhythm) for entertaining us oh so well!
I apologise for any wrong ideas or impressions of Beck that you may get from reading my analysies especially due to incorrect lyrics.
This is purely for fun. We are not judging Beck - except to say that he is cool, fine, and damb beautiful!
© started March 9th, 2000 station1@hotmail.com