Why Beck refused to let “Weird Al” Yankovic parody him
Not only is 1994’s ‘Loser’ by Beck one of the most iconic songs of the decade, but it is also the one that the American musician is famous for, despite having an extensive and eclectic oeuvre that is brimming with many other stellar moments.
An alt-rock classic that blends in hypnotic flecks of hip-hop, at first, the track’s success threatened Beck, as commentators dismissed him as a purely a one-hit wonder, but he showed to all his detractors that this wasn’t true, and that the best was yet to come.
Given the ubiquity of ‘Loser’ it soon found itself in the sights of perennial musical joker “Weird Al” Yankovic, with the man who had famously reworked classic Michael Jackson and Nirvana songs wanting to parody the hit; however, Beck turned him down.
In a July 2022 episode of the Audible series Words + Music, Beck looked back on that time, admitting that he regrets not allowing Yankovic to cover his hit. Before the full release of the episode, entitled ‘Dear Life’, Billboard recieved an exclusive preview clip, and per their account, Yankovic’s parody was to be called ‘Schmoozer’.
“‘Weird Al’ Yankovic tried to do a version of it. It was going to be called ‘Schmoozer,'” Beck said. “Which I regret denying him permission to do; I think it would have been an amazing video. I’m actually really sad that it didn’t happen.”
Beck explained on the Audible episode that the song was repeatedly “rejected” by major labels, prompting him to release it independently. A testament to the quality of the song and its author’s skill, major record labels started to approach him after it became a sleeper hit.
“It got rejected by everybody,” he recalled. “So after a couple of years of this, they ended up putting that song out. 500 copies. And somehow, on its own, it just got on the radio and it went straight to No. 1 and was in the top five for a year”.
Beck continued, “And so all these labels were coming back like, ‘Hey, we said that song would never go anywhere, and it was this and that, but hey, can we talk?'”
Despite his newfound success as a hero of Generation X, Beck was still unsure of agreeing to Yankovic’s request to parody ‘Loser’, as he wanted to avoid becoming known for only that song.
“It wasn’t really taken seriously at all. And when it came out and it was popular, it still wasn’t taken that serious at all,” he explained. “I mean, you can go back to the press of the day. I just remember myriad articles and headlines of ‘one-hit wonder,’ ‘joke band,’ ‘Beck novelty act.'”
