Lyrics:

The Song:

"Nausea" is sort of a funky acoustic song on record with lots of percussion. Beck said he wanted the song "to sound like The Stooges in South America." (On stage, they play it more just like The Stooges.)

Beck said the music for this song came quickly, as part of a 7-day marathon of jamming and writing and then going back and taking bits of the jam and expanding. He also said on stage in May 2006 that he'd written it a couple of years before, so it must have been part of one of the earlier Information sessions.

Around this time, and throughout The Information, Beck seemed to be very interested in French philosophy and literature. There's lyrical references in songs like "Landslide" to French existential novels, and "Nausea"'s title is as well (Nausea is an incredible novel by Jean-Paul Sartre).

I don't believe there are any direct references to Sartre's novel beyond the title here, but the song does seem to be about a similar absurdist search for meaning. The main character in the novel suffers from a feeling of nausea whenever he attempts to define himself, be it through work, memories, love, or even items in nature (like a tree). His final revelation is the underlying absurdism of life. Objects do not have any inherent meaning, unless people provide it to them. People, then, must also provide their own meaning, which in turn allows people to feel free. This is the classic definition of existentialism.

Beck's song is less about a search specifically, though it is full of lines about defining himself. The first verse is a mixed metaphor about a musician/sailor, sounding very much like Beck is tired of the road life. (He has a few other songs around then that were more specifically about this, like "Movie Theme.")

Later verses are a little more absurd, but Beck again seems to defining his feelings of being out of place ("I push a shopping cart over in an Aztec ruin") and weary ("I'm a dead generator in a cloud of exhaust"). He continues to try to define himself via meaningless work filling his wasted years ("rate the days, one to ten, with lead cigarettes").

Live:

Played live 96 times:
Earliest known live version: May 24, 2006
Latest known live version: November 7, 2017

"Nausea" was played quite regularly for a couple of tours after it was released, but since, it has been dropped.

2006-2007 Info tours

"Nausea" made its debut on May 24, 2006 in Davis, CA. 2006's summer tour was before the album came out, but Beck still played some of the songs. Beck played "Nausea" at most every show in this time. It was less the acoustic-based song as it is on the record, but more of regular rock song. Similar high energy though, and lots of percussion and the band definitely has a blast with it.

2008-2009 Modern Guilt tours

Beck continued with the song regularly, at about 80% of his shows behind Modern Guilt. He liked to race through some of his rock songs all in a row to open these shows, and "Nausea" was one of them.

2011-2013 pre-Morning Phase tours

Beck took some time off for a few years, and slowly made a return in 2011 with five shows. "Nausea" showed up at two of those. Then in 2012, there were are a few more smaller legs, but they just played "Nausea" once at a gig in Australia. The song then vanished entirely from 2013-2016 through the Morning Phase tour and beyond.

2017-2018 Colors tour

In August 2017, Beck posted an Instagram clip of his guitarist Jason Falkner jamming and Beck wrote something like "Nausea back to life." Then in October, Beck did a quick worldwide run to promote his new album Colors - 2 shows in London, 1 in LA, 2 in Tokyo, radio/TV spots. During this run, Beck did do "Nausea" 4 times (3 at gigs, once on the radio in LA).

However, the song did not stay "back to life" very long. When the tour properly began in 2018, it had been forgotten and was not played at all for the rest of the tour.