Why do people prefer Odelay to Mellow Gold?

(And I realize you may well disagree with me about the *Odelay* tracks that I say sound prissy. That's fine; I'm willing to admit my tastes might be weird there; you're not gonna change my mind, and I won't change yours. But you should still answer my main question.)

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I think critics felt the same then, as in "Whew! He's NOT a one-hit wonder after all" and all that.

Me, too.

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"Can't afford a telephone / Nothing's gonna harm you"

Hey wait, doesn't *Odelay* have a track *called* "Ramshackle" on it?

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Only thing I liked much on *Guero* is the title track. Otherwise, I just can't get pass the muffled vocals. There's this one ballad with a sort of Link Wray guitar that seemed pretty, though. And a bluesy thing about dying jumped out of my random CD player a couple times, but that's it. The rest seemed like a chore to me, so I said fuck it.

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For your information, "Odelay" is not a single. "Odelay" is an album. Same with "Mellow Gold". And, btw, there were three singles pulled from "Odelay" that were all considerably better than "Where It's At" (and "Loser")

REALLY?? Okay, this totally answers my question! Thanks!!

In answer to the thread question though, I would say it's because Odelay works as a party album, where, at best, Mellow Gold works as a stoner cookout album. (FWIW I like Mellow Gold best of all his albums)

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I am so confused now! I just prefer albums where most of the hit singles don't suck, I guess.

Great songs IMO, at least the former and latter. But the hitlists don't lie. And they tell you they weren't hits even closely the size of "Loser".

15 Beck Loser Mar 1994
35 Beck Where It's At Jun 1996
22 Beck Devil's Haircut Nov 1996
14 Beck The New Pollution Mar 1997
30 Beck Sissyneck May 1997
23 Beck Deadweight Nov 1997
39 Beck Tropicalia Dec 1998
27 Beck Sexx Laws Nov 1999
34 Beck Mixed Bizness Apr 2000
38 Beck E-Pro Mar 2005

Actually, "Little Drum Machine Boy" does. I always forget that one. Which is easy, I guess, since it barely exists. (As barely does "Alcohol," which I still think is one of his best ballads.)

Well, this would certainly explain why I am not in the Odelay club.

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Dust Brothers showed up with 'Paul's Boutique' under their belts, turned the self-consciousness a notch, put spotlights on the quotes around every sample -- suddenly the rest of the world goes 'I get it'

But the soul's already gone, leaving only a party record with lobotomy beats

Not sure what "this" or what "news" you're referring to, Anthony. Basically, it's not like I think about Beck all that often. In the wake of his new album, I keep seeing *Odelay* mentioned as the landmark, where I would think *Mellow Gold* (which, after all, is the record that made him famous) would make sense. It had honestly never occurred to me before. (And yeah, *Odelay* did way better in Pazz & Jop in its year, but that seemed more like critics consolidating, and yeah, finally taking the guy seriously *at that particular time.* It wouldn't necessarily have to translate to how they would see him in retrospect; I'd be more inclined to think that, once critics decided with *Odelay* that he was a "real" artist not just a "novelty" artist etc., they'd go back to *Mellow Gold* and recall the artistry there. *Spin*'s alternative guide -- a book I am not now and have never been a particular fan of -- gave *MG* 10 out of 10, after all, before *Odelay* came out. So at one point, it *was* considered the big deal.)

Better songs. "Sissineck" and "Devil's Haircut" is way better than "Loser", which, with its rap verse, was hardly a song at all.

I'll give you three reasons: "Sweet Sunshine", "Mutherfukker", and "Steal My Body Home"

Please don't tie me in with what Geir's saying. I think all his albums are some choice hits and a lot of filler (his best album will be his 2CD Singles comp 10 or 15 years from now, like Bowie's Rykodisc one). I just think the filler on Odelay is more listenable than the stuff on Mellow Gold.

haha ok I didn't realize it was his apex or anyhow (preferred Midnite Vultures back when it came out) but I definitely gathered that it shot over Mellow Gold in critical and commercial acclaim. I remember wondering if SPIN would backpedal on the Mellow 10 out of 10.

Personally I prefer Beck most of all because he is indeed a good composer of pop songs, which is why "Sea Change" is my fave album by him anyway :)

(Plus, other than the "Late For The Sky" album, he was never really utilizing his melodic gifts anyway)

You should hear the Nina Demos.

"DIAMOND BOLLOCKS"!!!... and "Mutations" is my favourite Beck album by far.

You watch. The sloppy unlistenable mess that is Speakerboxxx/The Love Below will dwarf the far superior Stankonia come 10 years.

Why did that Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums have

Eminem Show over Marshall Mathers? Why is everyone fawning over Madvillainy when Doom's been making better records for years?

When people are late to the party, they overcompensate the next time around if the album's half decent.

Plenty of Beck fans are fratboys and yuppies who didn't like Beck until he was BECK, not some critically acclaimed guy with a novelty song on the radio. Blame them.

I'm with you on Steropathetic Soul manure anyway

So OTM. I'm glad to finally hear someone say this.

-- joseph cotten

Normally I don't think this is a fair line of criticism either, but I really feel that way about Mutations, like it was just crafted to have a certian cool sound and not much else.

Jackson Browne, Wilco and folk-Beck have never been about rhythm. And there's no point looking for rhythm in their music. Rhythm isn't important anyway.

Fast forward to last month and the release of Guero. I watched the video for E-Pro online, thought the visuals were cool but didn't think the song was all that great. When the album came out, I kind of wanted to download it first to preview, but gave in and bought it without having heard any of the other songs, on the day it came out. I didn't listen to it for a week, wanting to make sure that when I put it on, I could seriously give it attention. At first listen, I wasn't sure what to think. It didn't seem that great. Now that I've been a college radio DJ for 5 years, I've been exposed to a lot of music and my interests are far more varied. I really wanted to still like Beck though. And after listening to it Guero several more times, I've come around to enjoy it. But I can't really be an impartial judge on Beck it seems. It's kind of like that Pitchfork article from last month about R.E.M.'s Warner Brothers albums. I dunno.

As for the individual merits of Mellow Gold vs. Odelay, I'd say Odelay is more consistent. I think it's considered the classic album because that's when everyone came to the consensus that Beck is good. MG is probably too indie overall to be considered the classic, perhaps (at least my mainstream media). I'm not really sure how to put it. I love Beercan and I love Hotwax. Nitemare Hippie Girl and Lord Only Knows. Truckdrivin' Neighbors and Sissyneck. They just all have their certain way of appealing to me. Ok, I'm gonna shut up. This was way too long. I'm new.

so OTM.
I remember thinking there was something wrong with me for liking mellow gold when it seemed that everyone else wrote him off as a one-hit wonder.

Sea Change would've worked well as maybe an 8 track mini album. As it is, it's WAAY too long & dull

Doubtful, but either way, adding a sense of rhythm to Pavement (who sure as hell needed one) was a move forward, not a move back. And given how Pavement's most interesting work was on their first three EPs, *Slanted and Enchanted* being knighted as *their* classic goes along with the theme of this thread as perfectly as the most recent OutKast album does.

I was pretty familiar with Beck by the time Odelay came out; in Beck's case, going mainstream helped focus his songwriting and his arrangements beyond the half brilliant/half incoherent, self-indulgent mess that marks all of his previous albums.

I don't know exactly how depressed I would be to understand the true genius of the Cure but I've got better things etc. etc.

Also, it's not so much a "defense" as it is an "attack".

So anyway, early Beck really sucks and Mellow Gold has maybe three briliant songs on it and a bunch of irritating filler. Dude never actually made a consistently good album until Odelay, ergo Odelay is the album that everyone looks to as "the turning point".

HI DERE.

Every song on Mellow Gold is brilliant, wtf?

Maybe Dan has a problem with screwed-and-chopped music and therefore cannot stand "Truck Drivin' Neighbors Downstairs" (which is the only possible explanation that comes to mind)

This I DEFINITELY can't agree with. I guess I could say though that he suffered in the beginning of his career the same problem Prince has later in life...he couldn't not put out everything. That being said, there are far too few post-Odelay Beck songs as good as "Mexico" or "Satan Gave Me a Taco" or "Painted Eyelids" or any number of other forgotten early-era gems.

You mean "was", not "is". (At least back in the early-to-mid 90s.)

You know, arguing that Odelay inherently appeals to a wider group of people than Mellow Gold kind of answers the question "Why do people prefer Odelay to Mellow Gold?", don't you think?

Also, thinking "GLOBAL", Beck really made it internationally with Odelay

Squeezing Out Sparks! (A much better album than the others you mentioned, Odelay included, though I bet not 5 percent of ILMers, even, could say off the top of their heads who made it.)

Gotta say I'm confused about why you think crits didn't like the Beasties til the '90s though; their first two albums (a/k/a the only good albums they ever made) actually did pretty well Pazzandjopwise...

Unless some enterprising bootlegger I'm unaware of has combined all tracks from their Cookie Puss, Rock Hard, and She's On It 12-inches onto one CD, that is.

xpost - vh1 classicks shows the vid for 'she's on it' freakishly often.

Have to agree with Chuck here. "Doctor My Eyes" has a prefectly decent rhythm section, maybe a little muted, and there are congas as I remember.

(x-post)

It's supposed to be "I Walk on Gilded Splinters" or whatever that Dr. John song is called, right? I swear, though, to me it always sounded like "Midnight Rider" by the Allman Brothers.

Talk about somebody dumb old critics came to late! Believe it or not his new wave era Costello/Parker wannabe stuff (Slug Line, Two Bit Monsters, hell maybe even Warming Up the Ice Age way up in '85, though by then he was more ZZ Top wannabe I guess) is actually kinda fun. But of course the critics (okay, except some Trouser Press geeks who LOVED Costello wannabes, even the Jags) didn't like him until he'd totally slowed down and "matured" and grown petrified and gave up hooks for Lent. (Now somebody will tell me that his 1975 Overcoat album, which I've never heard, beats the new wave stuff. Yeah right, and I'm sure Rick Springfield was better doing "Speak to the Sky".)

-- Aerodynamic (TransparentRadiatio...), April 18th, 2005.

Loved loved loved "Loser" when it came out, then I saw "Where It's At" on SNL and went out the next day to buy the album. A lot of things about the performance on SNL were just right, and I loved the whole Devo-meets-James Brown vibe I got. Only later I backtracked and got the old albums and now "Stereopathetic" is my absolute fave.

"Odelay" is just so fun, it's totally a party record, and the production I think was the sucker punch for me. When i think about MG it feels more homogeneous, whereas there are bits and samples and neat things all over Odelay that I have always loved; that accordian solo, the one song ending with the "I am the wizard of rhythm" bit, the part in High-5 that stops dead in its tracks and plays the soundtrack from a scary movie, the one that starts with the Bruce Haack sample, etc.

Compared to Stereopaethic MG is hardly the nonsense 4-track bits-and-pieces collection it could have been, so I don't think of it that way. But Odelay is slick yet trashy at the same time, and really well done.

Me, I've no problem with Beck, 'cept that all the people I know who are heavily into him seem to think that he's their ultimate 'cool' badge. I prefer to give the genuine love, man. And Beck ain't where it's at.

The first person I thought of after Parker was Ted Leo for some reason.

Yeah, but as covered by Johnny Jenkins.

i'm trying to think in where and when beck might've been the ultimate cool badge.

MIDWESTERN HIGH SCHOOL 1995!

Probably @ KXLU, 1992 when thurston moore played a tape of his live on air.

Hmmm...I think I would need to consult Falco on that question.

i've never heard mellow gold because of knee-jerk backlash against overexposure to "loser".

Maybe I have lots of sad friends. They were the same people who bought all the moog sampler albums.

xhuxk:

But people don't tend to write about *Odelay* as "an album with lots of good songs on it"; they tend to write about it as, like I said before, a "hugely eclectic mix of everything under the sun"--they pretend that was its great innovation. If they wrote about it as a formally consistent pop record[...]

I guess I can't speak for how it gets written about or whatever, but in terms of the place Odelay has in my own life as a music listener, I think the "formally consistent pop record" is a pretty good summary of why I love the thing. I mean I played the hell out of this album, and it's not like all of that listening time was going "Wow, this is so eclectic!" It just has great tunes and cool lyrics that are fun and easy to sing along to, and cool sound-surprises that are still cool the hundredth time...the point wasn't the eclecticism but just that this was a CD that felt like it had so much more music in it than any other, and it was all really great shit.

Mellow Gold I picked up much, much later - it always kind of radiated something suspicious to my pop-minded mind and indeed I found it harder to get into - the Under the Western Freeway to Odelay's Sophtware Slump. The best stuff, to my ears, is the tightly-produced, uptempo stuff with hippy-hoppy stuff - basically the stuff that could have plausibly fit on Odelay. That means "Beercan," "Soul Suckin Jerk" (not quite as clean but it's just so great!) and to a much, much lesser extent "Loser," which I liked as an alt-rock teen, I now suspect in large part because I felt I was supposed to.

yeah, people forget that beck can string a pretty good tune together when he puts his mind to it...

I haven't really listened to Mellow Gold or Odelay much since high school, but I keep coming back to Stereopathetic Soulmanure and Midnite Vultures. People can say whatever they want about MV being some insufferable hipstery smirking joke, my stance on it won't budge an inch.

I am among those who do, and I think "Odelay" has a little bit more details to discover there in the production. Plus "Mellow Gold" has no song as amazingly great as "Sissyneck".

But they are similar in a lot of ways, and "Mellow Gold" is by no means a bad album.

The answer to your question is The Dust Brothers

You can't underestimate the cred these guys brought to the table by 1996. By that point, Check Your Head and Ill Communication had made the Beasties superstars, leaving Paul's Boutique widely viewed as some kind of cult masterpiece and the Dust Brothers these unknown geniuses.

Of course, by 1996 something else had happened: you couldn't sample with impunity anymore as the DB had on Paul's Boutique -- as a result, Odelay was recorded in such a way that the parts were played live, sampled and processed to "sound" like samples off of old vinyl. The result, as you'd imagine, is a record that "sounds" samplidelic but lacks the disorientation of a Paul's Boutique. Which of course was half the fun.

I can't listem to neither of them these days but at least Mello Gold is a Modest effort.
always liked the minimal Beck + acoustic guitar more than anything

Bartender shaking her thing to “hot wax”