Song Dissection - Beck

So, here’s another Song Dissection for you.  This time I felt like a challenge, so I decided to tackle Beck – Loser, as suggested by Chiz.  Let’s see if we can discern some sort of narrative within this blithering mess:

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey

Butane in my veins so I'm out to cut the junkie

-       OK, so we’ve established that Beck is a monkey that is addicted to hooking up Calor gas cylinders to his veins.  Quite why he decided to go into song writing is beyond me, but let’s continue.

With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables

-       Two points.  One, if you have plastic eyeballs, you really need to change your doctor.  They should at least be giving you glass ones, or could probably resolve your ophthalmic needs with laser eye surgery. Two, I would never support a man who enjoys spray painting paraplegics.  It’s just cruel.

Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose

-       I used to know a girl at school who smelled distinctly of bacon.  Not nice smoked bacon, but bacon that’s been spat out of a dog’s mouth and left on a windowsill for a month.  We eventually found out that this smell was caused by incontinence, and the fact that she didn’t change her undergarments.  The point I’m trying to make here is that if you own some pantyhose that smells distinctly of meat, it’s probably not a great item to keep around food preparation areas, even if you’re only selling dog food.  Food hygiene is important.

Kill the headlights and put it in neutral

Stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control

-       We’ve now established that Beck is not a great driver.  That’s probably how he got his plastic eyes.

Baby's in Reno with the vitamin D

Got a couple of couches sleep on the love seat

Someone keeps sayin I'm insane to complain

About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt

-       Actually, I think he’s a got a right to complain about this marriage.  What kind of sick weirdo would force a blind monkey to marry their daughter?  Also, they could at least give him some clean clothes for the big day.

Don't believe everything that you breathe

-       So if I breathe in noxious fumes, they don’t necessarily exist?  Quick, pass the glue!  I have some school years to catch up on.

You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve

-       Is that the punishment for a parking violation?  I’d take a maggot on my sleeve over a parking fine any day.

So shave your face with some mace in the dark

Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park

-       Sounds like a good night out to me.  Someone’s going to be hungover tomorrow!

Yo, cut it.

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

-       I won’t kill you because assisted suicide is illegal, even if you are a blind monkey suffering from car crash injuries.

Soy un perdidor

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare

Banned all the music with a phony gas chamber

-       Let’s take this back a step and contemplate what Beck is describing here.  He is imagining a post-apocalyptic world in which music, in all forms, has been outlawed.  Any kind of sonic output is punishable with bruising justice.  The standard sentence for a convicted musician is to put rounded up into concentration camps, pushed into a makeshift gas chamber, under the impression that they’re going to die.  Then, the whole thing turns out to be a hoax and streamers come out of the showers or something.  This is unimaginable cruelty.

'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag

One's got on the pole shove the other in a bag

-       Are these Christmas presents?  I’d be pretty pissed if my parents only bought me a flag or a pole for Christmas.  The weasel would be pretty cool though, although difficult to wrap.

With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose job

The daytime crap of a folksinger slob

He hung himself with a guitar string

-       Don’t know of many folk singers that have died a rockstar death, but there you go.

Slap the turkey neck and it's hangin from a pigeon wing

-       I assume this is an insult towards the wobbly bit of fat that some people have underneath their arms.

You can't write if you can't relate

Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate

-       This is the weirdest trade-up I’ve ever heard of.  He should start with a bottle of water and try and work his way up to a camper van.  Still, if I was Beck, I’d have stuck with the body.  It sounds like he needs a new one after that traffic collision.

And my time is a piece of wax, fallin' on a termite

That's chokin on the splinters

-       That’s an incredibly wretched life for that termite.  He might even rival Beck himself as the most severely disabled person in this song.

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

(Get crazy with the Cheeze Whiz)

Soy un perdidor

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

(Drive-by body pierce)

Yo bring it on down

Sooooooy...

(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.)

Soy un perdidor

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

(I can't believe you)

Soy un perdidor

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

Soy un perdidor

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

(Sprechen sie Deutches, baby)

Soy un perdidor

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

(Know what I'm sayin?)

-       These aren’t closing lyrics.  They’re more like spasms.

So what can we take from this song?  Well, Beck goes into great detail about a car crash which turned him into a partially-sighted simian, and repeatedly begs us to kill him.  Lovely!

If you have any songs you’d like to see dissected here, please let me know.