Twenty years ago, Bek David Campbell — better known to you as the musical artist Beck — entered Ocean Way studios in Hollywood to record a series of songs he wrote in a single-week bender after the bust-up of his relationship with stylist Leigh Limon. Reportedly she had cheated on him, and their engagement was ended. The ultimate breakup album of my lifetime (and probably yours) would be released that September under the name Sea Change.
In the months before recording, Beck had just finished up a tour in support of his late-1999 album Midnight Vultures. That album was a gonzo but reverent appropriation of black musical genres. In it Beck adopted R&B at its most sensual, ’90s hip-hop at its most crassly materialistic and braggadocious, and funk at its most drug-addled. Then he made it all nerdier. He approached this material with both a genius for arrangement, a motormouth’s recollection of Los Angeles County references, and an art student’s deranged intention to shock, horrify, and provoke laughter. A sample of the lyrics from his scornful “Hollywood Freaks”:
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