Early performances and first releases (1988–1993) Beck began as a
folk musician, switching between
country blues,
Delta blues, and more traditional rural folk music in his teenage years. He began performing on city buses, often covering Mississippi John Hurt alongside original, sometimes improvisational compositions. Beck was roommates with
Paleface, sleeping on his couch and attending open mic nights together. Daunted by the prospect of another homeless New York winter, Beck returned to his home of Los Angeles in early 1991. "I was tired of being cold, tired of getting beat up," he later remarked. "It was hard to be in New York with no money, no place ... I kinda used up all the friends I had. Everyone on the scene got sick of me." "I'd be banging away on a
Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking. So maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience's boredom, I'd make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening," he later remarked. Virtually an unknown to the public and an enigma to those who met him, Beck would hop onstage between acts in local clubs and play "strange folk songs", accompanied by "what could best be described as
performance art" while sometimes wearing a
Star Wars stormtrooper mask. Beck met someone who offered to help record
demos in his living room, and he began to pass
cassette tapes around. In 1992, Beck visited Stephenson's home to collaborate with him. The result—the
slide-
sampling hip hop track "
Loser"—was a one-off experiment that Beck set aside, going back to his folk songs, making his home tapes such as
Golden Feelings, and releasing several independent singles. Beck felt that "Loser" was mediocre, and only agreed to its release at Rothrock's insistence. "Loser" unexpectedly received radio airplay, starting in Los Angeles, where
college radio station
KXLU was the first to play it, During the bidding war in November, Beck spent several days in
Olympia, Washington, recording material with
Calvin Johnson of
Beat Happening, which would later see release the following year on Johnson's
K Records as
One Foot in the Grave. Beck's non-exclusive contract with Geffen allowed him an unusual amount of creative freedom, with Beck remaining free to release material through such small, independent labels as
Flipside, which issued the sprawling, 25-track collection of pre-"Loser" recordings titled
Stereopathetic Soulmanure on February 22 the following year. "Loser" quickly ascended the charts in the U.S., reaching a peak of number ten on the
Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and topping the
Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song also charted in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. Beck's newfound position of attention led to his characterization as the "King of Slackers", as the media dubbed him the center of the new so-called "slacker" movement. Critics, feeling it the essential follow-up to
Radiohead's "
Creep", In the summer of 1994, Beck was struggling and many of his fellow musicians thought he had lost his way. Despite this, Beck gained the respect of his peers, such as
Tom Petty and
Johnny Cash, and created an entire wave of bands determined to recapture the
Mellow Gold sound. Each day, the musicians started from scratch, Beck was introduced to the
Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys' album ''
Paul's Boutique'', whose cut-and-paste, sample-heavy production suited Beck's vision of a more fun, accessible album. After a record executive explained that
Odelay would be a "huge mistake", he spent many months thinking "that I'd blown it forever". and was nominated for the
Grammy Award for
Album of the Year in 1997, winning a
Grammy Award for
Best Alternative Music Album as well as a
Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Where It's At". During one busy week in January 1997, he landed his Grammy nominations, appeared on
Saturday Night Live and
Howard Stern, and did a last-minute trot on ''
The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The combined buzz gave Odelay'' a second wind, leading to an expanded fan base and additional exposure Though the album was originally slated for release by Bong Load Records, Geffen intervened and issued the record against Beck's wishes. The artist then sought to void his contracts with both record labels, and in turn the labels sued him for breach of contract. The litigation went on for years and it remains unclear to this day if it has ever been completely resolved. Beck was later awarded Best Alternative Music Performance for
Mutations at the
42nd Grammy Awards.
Midnite Vultures, Beck's next studio effort, was originally recorded as a double album, and more than 25 nearly completed songs were left behind. In November 1999, Geffen released the much-anticipated
Midnite Vultures, which attracted confusion: "fans and critics misguidedly worried whether it was serious or a goof," and as a result,
The New York Times wrote that the album "never won the audience it deserved".
Midnite Vultures was nominated for Best Album at the
43rd Annual Grammy Awards.
Sea Change (2002–2003) In 2000, Beck and his fiancée, stylist Leigh Limon, ended their nine-year relationship. Beck lapsed into a period of melancholy and introspection, during which he wrote the bleak, acoustic-based tracks later found on
Sea Change. Beck sat on the songs, not wanting to talk about his personal life; he later said that he wanted to focus on music and "not really strew my baggage across the public lobby". Eventually, however, he decided the songs spoke to a common experience, and that it would not seem self-indulgent to record them. In 2001, Beck drifted back to the songs and called Godrich. Retailers initially predicted that the album would not receive much radio support, but they also believed that Beck's maverick reputation and critical acclaim, in addition to the possibility of multiple Grammy nominations, might offset
Sea Changes noncommercial sound. The album was later listed by the magazine as one of the best records of the decade and of all time, and it also placed second on the year's
Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.
Sea Change yielded a low-key, theater-based acoustic tour, as well as a larger tour with
The Flaming Lips as Beck's opening and backing band. Beck was playful and energetic, sometimes throwing in covers of
the Rolling Stones,
Big Star,
the Zombies and
the Velvet Underground. Following the release of
Sea Change, Beck felt newer compositions were sketches for something more evolved in the same direction, and wrote nearly 35 more songs in the coming months, keeping demos of them on tapes in a suitcase.
Guero debuted at number two on the
Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "
E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the
Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on
Hell Yes, an
EP issued in February 2005. Also released in 2005 was
A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks.
The Information, Beck's tenth studio album, began production around the same time as
Guero, in 2003. Working again with Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. Beck had known Danger Mouse casually before, as many of his former musicians ended up working with Danger Mouse's side project,
Gnarls Barkley. Still, the musicians were surprised at how well they got along.
Modern Guilt (2008) was "full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s vibe." Beck also collaborated with
Philip Glass,
Jack White,
Tobacco of
Black Moth Super Rainbow, Jamie Lidell,
Seu Jorge,
Childish Gambino, and
The Lonely Island.
Song Reader, a project Beck released in December 2012, is 20 songs presented only as sheet music, in the hopes that enterprising musicians will record their own versions. The idea of
Song Reader came about nearly fifteen years prior, shortly after the release of
Odelay. In the summer of 2013, Beck was reported to be working on two new studio albums: one a more self-contained acoustic disc in the vein of
One Foot in the Grave and another described as a "proper follow-up" to
Modern Guilt. Beck expected to release both albums independently, and released three standalone singles over the course of the year: the
electro ballad "
Defriended", the chorus-heavy "I Won't Be Long", and finally "Gimme". In October 2013, Beck signed to
Capitol Records.
Morning Phase, Colors, Hyperspace (2014–2022) In January, Beck released the lead single "
Blue Moon" from his twelfth studio album,
Morning Phase. A second single "
Waking Light" was also released a week prior to the official release of
Morning Phase on February 21, 2014. For the recording of the album, Beck reunited with many of the same musicians with whom he had worked on the critically acclaimed 2002 album
Sea Change, and likely because of this, it has been noted that the two albums share a similar mood and genre. On February 8, 2015, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards,
Morning Phase won three Grammys:
Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical;
Best Rock Album; and
Album of the Year. Upon receiving the Album of the Year award, the album beat out Pharrell Williams's
G I R L, Beyoncé's
self-titled album, Sam Smith's
In the Lonely Hour, and Ed Sheeran's
x. In June 2015, Beck released "
Dreams", the first single for his next album. The next June, he released the next single, "
Wow". On September 8, 2017, Beck released the single "Dear Life", which was followed up with the official release of "Up All Night" on September 18. The album,
Colors, was released on October 13, 2017. It was recorded at co-executive producer
Greg Kurstin's Los Angeles studio, with Beck and Kurstin playing nearly every instrument themselves. The experimental pop-fused record received generally positive reviews from critics. On July 18, 2018, Beck performed the title track
Colors, and the first single "Wow" on
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On April 15, 2019, Beck released a single co-produced with
Pharrell Williams titled "
Saw Lightning" from his fourteenth studio album, titled
Hyperspace. The song "
Dark Places" was released on November 6, with the album being released on November 22.
Recent activity (2022–present) On September 25, 2022, Beck released a cover of
Neil Young's track "
Old Man" to promote a
Sunday Night Football game. The track was nominated for the
Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance for the 65th
Grammy Awards later in 2022. A music video for the track would be released on December 8, 2022. Following the commercial featuring the cover, Neil Young posted a still image from his 1988 music video for "This Note's For You", an anti-commercialization song in protest of the cover and commercial. Later on February 10, 2023, he released the song "Thinking About You", his first original solo-track since 2019's
Hyperspace. A music video for the track would be released on February 20, 2023. It is currently unknown if this means a 15th studio album will be released in the upcoming future or not. Many music critics have noted that it sounds like a return to the folk of
Morning Phase and
Sea Change. On 29 January, 2026, Beck announced the compilation album ''
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes'', curating a collection of rarities, deep cuts and cover versions, including previously unreleased recordings of "Your Cheatin' Heart" and "True Love Will Find You in the End". Initially, the eight-track album released digitally with a physical release on red vinyl set for 13 February, 2026. == Collaborations and contributions ==