Heather's

BECK LYRICS - ANALYZED

[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.

"I'm mixing fitness with leather
Homework with Heather
"


If you'd like to analyze some Beck lyrics and don't know where to start, I've described how I go about it here.

For now, the only available analyzed songs are:

Hotwax
Sissyneck
Steal My Body Home
Tropicalia
We Live Again


October 2000 - The lyrics to all songs on Beck's major releases are now available. (Use links below).

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:

Loser
Beautiful Way
We Live Again (my comments are here as well)
Where It's At
Soul Suckin' Jerk

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


SOON TO COME: "Cold Brains", Lyrics from "Sea Change"
Stereopathetic Soulmanure Mellowgold One Foot in the Grave Odelay! Mutations Midnite Vultures


My Beck autograph!
Much of this is here thanks to the very excellent Beck lyric pages out there, including: Beck.com and Beck Lyrics

And of course, a BIG thanks to Bek David Campbell / Beck Hansen (truly THE Enchanting Wizard of Rhythm) for entertaining us oh so well!



If you'd like more information on each of Beck's songs, a good source is Beck! On a Backwards River by Rob Jovanovic.
I take a peek into it all the time for interesting tidbits from the "Sing It Again - An A-Z Directory of Songs" section. Some of which I'll be using here. (I do like having references to back me up - as annoying as they are to find sometimes).
"I remember talking to some journalist in Hong Kong and he read me lyrics to one of my songs that weren't anything close to the ones I wrote. They were much better. I've been kicking myself ever since I didn't write down what he thought they were." - Rolling Stone 1996

I apologise for any wrong ideas or impressions of Beck that you may get from reading my analysies especially due to incorrect lyrics.

SORRY!

This is purely for fun. We are not judging Beck - except to say that he is cool, fine, and damb beautiful!


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Heather's Beck Tribute


Last Updated April 24th, 2003

© started March 9th, 2000 station1@hotmail.com



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