The Becklash Is About To Begin

Brian Raftery | October 20, 2006 5:03 am
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A few months ago, Wired magazine ran a cover story on Beck that focused less on his songwriting and more on his music-distribution prowess. And damned if it didn’t draw some of the angriest reader mail we’ve seen. From the new issue’s “Rants + Raves” column:

Beck is the ultimate marketing tool. He puts on a guise of a hipster, artsy, creative, self-absorbed musician who wants his fans to truly inhale and exhale his music through every medium available. Beck gets fans to think they’re participating in the creative process through interactive media, but then he takes them and remixes and sells them as a separate album, like Guerolito

and

Guero may have “represented a new way to think about the album,” but I wouldn’t know; only half the tracks are available on the Rhapsody music service. If Beck is going to shut out those of us who now “lease” music through such services, he’s going to alienate a growing segment of consumers…”

And finally…

Beck dropped the ball with that “Debra” mash-up, because that song is awesome as it is, and speeding it up and throwing Pharrell in there was junior-DJ hackwork.

Okay, so that last one ours. The original interview is below, so we leave the floor open to you: Is Beck truly the new-medium savior that Wired would like us to believe, or just a particularly savvy marketer who wants the cool-guy cred?

“The Infinite Album” [Wired]

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