Lyrics:

The Song:

This 22 minute piece of music was commissioned by Christian Dior to use as the soundtrack to a fashion show in the summer of 2004. Beck did it with Nigel Godrich, and I believe a cd of it was handed out at the fashion show (though I may be mistaken on that). Anyway, about a year later, it surfaced as an mp3 on Christian Dior's website. Then a couple of years later, it became clear that this track had contained many elements that showed up on The Information. Nigel & Beck had begun Info sessions long before it was released, and this piece is a glimpse into where they were at the time.

An interesting thing to me is that the lyrics are all very simple, like Beck had not really yet written any yet, just some brief phrases and melodies repeated over and over.

The piece begins with Beck chanting over an amazingly groovy bassline. I love when Beck plays bass, it's always kind of simple, but still really funky. It's kind of structureless to start, but lots of keyboards and synthesizers and guitars and stuff get placed over it. Beck chants, "hey! comin' around again" for quite awhile. (And incidentally, the "hey!" sounds fairly similar to the "hey" that begins the chorus of "Walls," 4 years later on Modern Guilt).

At around the four minute mark, when it's starting to get really funky, the bassline hits the riff that was used on "Cellphone's Dead" (and shows up as a bridge in the "Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton" medley).

After about 8 minutes, the song mutates into a new, "something inside my head" section. This part is just sublime.

This goes for a few minutes, before returning to earlier vocals over another new beat. All the vocals, and a new "I'd like to take the time" line, play off each other.

The song ends with an acoustic guitar plucking away over a drum machine, finishing around 19:25. This acoustic guitar was later sung over, becoming "New Round."

A coda is then tacked on to the end, repeating the "New Round" acoustic guitar/drum machine bit for a few more minutes.

Impressive! I'd love to hear more of these kind of experiments from Beck.

This song is so amazing that every other song is just a bag of vomit.