THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

230-Beck-Loser.

1994-Number 15 single.

Best Bit-At 1.07. After many years of trying to incorporate ‘Rapping’ into his music Beck finally realised that he was no good at it, which is the inspiration for this songs chorus.

Beck (see also best songs 879) was born Bek David Campbell on July 8th, 1970, in Los Angeles, California, United States. Before achieving success, and also after receiving recognition, he has continually experimented in many different musical genres, including Alternative Rock, Anti-Folk, Hip-Hop, Psychedelia, Lo-Fi, and Art Pop, with many of his Album releases being a completely different genre to the previous one. To date Beck has released 14 studio Albums between 1993-2019, and 52 singles between 1993-2021, he has also issued official remixes for other artists including David Bowie, (‘Seven’) and Bjork (‘Alarm Call.’) In America on the Billboard singles chart this song remains his only top 40 hit, when reaching Number 10 in 1994, while in the UK, 10 of his singles have made the top 40, with ‘The New Pollution’ charting the highest when reaching Number 14 in 1997.

‘Loser’ was initially released as Beck’s second single on the small independent record label ‘Bong Load Custom Records,’ and when it began receiving airplay on various Modern Rock Radio stations, it came to the attention of the bigger labels who began a bidding war for Beck’s signature. ‘Loser’ was written by Beck, and Carl Stephenson, whom Beck had met in 1990 in Los Angeles when Stephenson had been a member of the Modern Rock band ‘Forest for the Trees.’ The pair of them are also credited as the songs producers, along with Tom Rothrock, who is the owner of ‘Bong Load Records,’ and has gone on to produce for several other artists.

When Beck was a struggling musician trying to make a name for himself, if he saw the audience losing interest during a performance, and start chatting among themselves, he would make up nonsensical lyrics to try to grab back their attention. This led to the early development of ‘Loser,’ as the songs verses are just a stream of unrelated sentences strung together. As stated at the top of this article, the chorus of ‘Loser’ is Beck admitting that he hasn’t got the required skills to be a ‘Rapper.’

In the chorus Beck sings ‘Soy un perdedor,’ which is Spanish for ‘I’m a loser,’ this harks back to when Beck was growing up in the Latin section of Los Angeles, where most of his schoolmates were of Mexican descent, and he felt the odd one out. Beck has acknowledged how his eclectic taste in different musical genres impacted on the making of ‘Loser,’ including ‘Folk Music.’ Beck has said, ‘I’d realised that a lot of what Folk Music is about is taking a tradition and reflecting your own time. I knew my folk music would take off, if I put Hip-Hop beats behind it.’ He has also spoken about the similarities between Delta Blues, and Hip-Hop, which he has said helped to inspire the song.

‘In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey, Butane in my veins so 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.’