A homeless musician like Beck Hansen was in the late eighties and early nineties of the last century, he cannot afford to choose scenes worthy of his talent. He has to play where at least something will pay. So Beck performed in run-of-the-mill coffee shops and cheap clubs for a few dollars an hour, and sometimes on the street.
But the idle audience usually doesn’t give a damn about the creative efforts of artists trying to amuse them, so Beck began to attract their attention with an unusual manner of performance. As he himself recalls, he played in the style of Eddie “Sun” House, performing songs with ridiculous and funny lyrics, only to see if he could attract the chewing and chattering listeners. It was at that time that he learned to improvise brilliantly.
The history of creation and the meaning of the song Loser Beck
One day he was noticed by Tom Rothrock, co-owner of a record company, who introduced Beck to recording director Carl Stevenson. It was in his house that the first recording of the song Loser was made.
Beck hasn’t performed it before. Actually, before that Loser did not exist at all and appeared only as a result of their joint six-hour work. Stevenson listened to various songs of the musician, recorded a guitar riff, added a drum part to it, several samples and played the sitar himself. Beck then began to improvise to this music, imitating Chuck D and Public Enemy.
According to Beck, when he listened to one of the first drafts, he thought:
I’m the worst rapper in the world, I’m just a loser.
Thus was born the phrase that became the chorus of the song: “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me.”
The song was released as a single in March 1993. At the same time, it seemed frankly weak to Beck, and he agreed to issue five hundred copies only at the urgent request of Rothrock. But as soon as Loser sounded on one of the student radio stations in Los Angeles, it became a hit. Soon it was being sung by music lovers around the world.
Later, many fans began to look for deep meaning in almost every line of Loser. But let’s not forget that the lyrics were, for the most part, freestyle, so it’s unlikely that Beck himself thought too much about the subtext. Moreover, in one of the interviews, he generally called the song “a personal joke that was not originally intended for recording.”
In 2004, Loser was included in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Agree, more than worthy for a composition that was recorded from scratch in a few hours and subsequently underwent almost no changes.
Clip Loser Beck
The Loser music video was directed by Steve Hanft, a friend of Beck’s. The video is a psychedelic mishmash of different plots, created, according to experts, under the influence of surreal films of the twenties. In general, coffins, musicians coming out of them, crazy colors, junkies and so on. Only three hundred dollars were spent on it.
Interesting Facts
- The words from the chorus of “Soy un perdedor” in Spanish mean “I am a loser.”
- The drums on Loser are taken from Johnny Jenkins’ cover version of I Walk on Gilded Splinter.
- The line “I’m a driver, I’m a winner. Things are gonna change, I can feel it” is a line from the movie Kill the Moonlight by Steve Hanft.
- Beck’s last name is Hansen, which is why he is sometimes confused with the Hanson brothers, whose main hit was the song MMMBop.
- During live performances, Beck often reworks the lyrics, so you can hear new lines and verses at his concerts. Once he even dragged Jim Morrison and his famous memories of seeing dead Indians by the side of the road into Loser.
Loser Beck Lyrics
In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins and I’m out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables
Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin’ with a loser and the cruise control
Baby’s in reno with the vitamin d
Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love-seat
Someone came sayin’ I’m insane to complain
About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
Don’t believe everything that you breathe
You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Savin’ all your food stamps and burnin’ down the trailer park
Yo. cut it
soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare
Banned all the music with a phony gas chamber
‘cuz one’s got a weasel and the other’s got a flag
One’s on the pole, shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job
The daytime crap of the folksinger club
He hung himself with a guitar string
A slab of turkey-neck and it’s hangin’ from a pigeon wing
You can’t write if you can’t relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax fallin’ on a termite
who’s chokin’ on the splinters
soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
I’m a driver, I’m a winner; things are gonna change I can feel it
Loser Beck Lyrics
(Translation sometime later, when I have at least more or less dealt with all the slang expressions.)
