Beck: the one-man Talking Heads of the 1990s
When the alternative revolution started, it was pretty much open season for any trendy artist in the 1980s. The whole point behind grunge was to tear down the artists that were too superficial in the same way that the punks did, and even if he ran away from the spotlight, Kurt Cobain may as well have been the grunge equivalent to Johnny Rotten or Joe Strummer whenever he strapped on his guitar. But even for all of the punk credentials that came with alternative music, Beck was the moment when the new wave resurgence started coming into play as well.
Because when you think about it, Beck’s breakout songs were nowhere near the kind of rock and roll that Pearl Jam or Soundgarden made. He was still working in the same clubs, and while most people would have gladly left, seeing a scruffy-looking guy with an acoustic guitar singing ballads and going immediately into different genres with hip-hop beats on ‘Loser’ might have been too weird for them.
If we’re making the CBGBs-style comparison, though, a lot of what Beck did in his prime carried on the tradition that Talking Heads had been doing since their inception. David Byrne may have started out making the kind of offbeat rock and roll that fit well with other new wave acts, but both he and Beck knew that it was better to try and blend every single genre that suited them.
For as goofy as ‘Loser’ can be at times, hearing him embrace the country side of his sound on Sea Change wasn’t all that different from when Byrne would break out the acoustic guitars. And looking at the way that Byrne would often utilise bits and pieces from old soul classics into his sound, hearing Beck chop up different pieces of songs to find his hook on tracks like ‘The New Pollution’ or ‘Where It’s At’ was his version of disassembling music like on Fear of Music.
Then again, anyone being compared to Talking Heads needs to find a way to groove. Byrne didn’t deliver one of the greatest choreography performances in history for nothing, and while Beck did have a few danceable moments on his album, a track like ‘Sexx Laws’ crams every bite of funk that he can muster into one song, even managing to make something even more aggressive when putting together ‘E-Pro’ in the 2000s.
And right when everyone was getting used to their trademark genre-hopping, both acts knew how to stab their audience in the heart with the right song. ‘This Must Be The Place’ is the most gripping Talking Heads song in their catalogue, and while Beck has an entire album ripped straight out of his broken heart in Sea Change, his version of ‘Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime’ from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack is the most intense emotional experience in his catalogue, all while using only a few words.
But there’s one key difference between Beck and Talking Heads. The entire reason why the band called it quits was because they had done all they could do together. Byrne clearly couldn’t work with the group in that capacity any longer by the end of the 1980s, but they could justifiably claim that they did almost everything they could as a band. In Beck’s case, though, the future is still wide open.
From his collaborations with Gorillaz on their Song Machine series to making his version of a singer-songwriter record on Morning Phase, Beck has never left anything off the table and has continued to see where his muse has taken him. And even with him taking many cues from Byrne, he knows not to force a collaboration if it isn’t something that sits right with what is needed for the song.
Now that he has switched to synth-driven pop music on his latest album, Beck continues to have that ‘anything goes’ mentality whenever he gets behind the microphone. It was clear that Talking Heads needed to break things down after they had started to crumble, but for Beck, music is the Wild West, and he’s more than capable of going into whatever new territory he thinks would suit his needs.
