The Prince song that Beck wishes he’d written: “it never goes out of style”
David Bowie is considered the most chameleonic musician of all time, but a contemporary heavyweight gives him a run for his money; Beck. Although the Californian is known as one of the pioneers of 1990s no-wave and lo-fi, ultimately, it’s a description that adds unnecessary restrictions to his dynamic output.
Much more than the man who popularised the line, “soy un perdedor”, Beck has dipped his toes into a kaleidoscopic mix of genres across his long career. These include folk, new age, psychedelia, vaporwave, and perhaps most questionably of all, trap. Because of this dexterity, Beck has achieved great success and kept all his fans on their toes.
At face value, it seems that Beck primarily takes his cues from David Bowie regarding his shapeshifting nature, but that comparison is simply too obvious for a man of deep music understanding. It was Prince, the second-most eminent musical chameleon, who had the most significant impact on his creative vision. This point extends so far that Beck even named the song he wishes he’d written as a classic by the Minneapolis legend.
Notably, Beck’s dedication to Prince can be found most apparent in his 1999 album Midnite Vultures, wearing his influence proudly on ‘Debra’. Pertinently, the track was explicitly inspired by the Prince song ‘Adore’ and David Bowie’s ‘Win’. Sitting down with Entertainment Weekly in 2014, Beck was asked the age-old question about which song he wished he’d written, and unsurprisingly it was a Prince number. He chose the infinitely catchy 1986 hit ‘Kiss’, which was an interesting admission. The song contains dots of what would become Beck’s electropop style. ‘Kiss’ is dynamic, colourful and funky, with later Beck pieces such as ‘Up All Night’ heavily indebted to it.
Responding to the question, Beck said: “I’ve got thousands. But I think ‘Kiss’ by Prince. If you’re anywhere where people are celebrating something, that will get played. It’s of its era, but it never goes out of style, which is not something you can say about a lot of pop records from the ’80s.”
In 2019, Beck recorded the Paisley Park Sessions EP at Prince’s eponymous studio. In a behind-the-scenes interview, he recalled meeting his hero: “I remember Prince walking by once with three very large imposing bodyguards, and I’d heard that you don’t look at him. I walked by, and I did a look, and he was coming the other way, and somebody elbowed me and said, ‘Did you hear that?’ And I said, ‘What?’ He just very quietly said, ‘Hi Beck.’…He just sort of whispered it.”
