A review of Beck's "Colors"

All right, I'm going to get weird here for a moment. I do not consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but since the direction of Beck's follow up to Morning Phase has slowly come to light over the past three years, I have developed what one might call a "conspiracy theory"*...and here it is...

After Beck won the Grammy in 2015 and was rewarded by Kayne's cuntishness and a legion of ill-informed children tweeting #WhoIsBeck, I believe he had a thought. I believe his thought was to make an album so accessible and so mainstream as to show these twenty-somethings exactly who he was and what he was capable of. He sat down and looked at what he had lying around** and saw a bunch of stuff he did with super-mainstream, finger-on-the-pulse producer and former keyboardist, Greg Kurstin. This stuff was as far from the somber beauty of Morning Phase as Beck had been perhaps since 1999's Midnite Vultures and it was accessible as fuck. The plan started there.
Beck went on to make songs as commercial and radio-friendly as he was able, dusting them with just a hint of the funk and weirdness he is so adept at, but not too much funk or weirdness, got to keep this appealing to the masses, always think of the masses. If Morning Phase was the spiritual sequel to 2002's Sea Change, a complete work for musicians and people who loved intricate and challenging music that pays dividends after repeat listens, then this new one was going to be for the Playlist People, the Shuffleheads, those who like songs but not albums because who has forty minutes to listen to anything? To someone in their twenties, forty minutes is the equivalent of four hundred years. That is a fact created by combining math and science.***
At one point, and here's where things get uber-conspiratorial, Beck decides to not just make an album for the kids, he decides to mock them a little by lampooning the music and subjects they're used to. Proof?**** The first single, "Dreams". The song actually features the Millennial Whoop. And those lyrics...so...normal...
As time went on, the songs got more and more overproduced, and less and less substantial. He removed continuity and flow from the album, and came out with ten candy-coated frosting dots that were designed to appeal to the most brainless and least focused demographics: Millennials and the corporations that shill for Millennials.*****

Now, do I actually believe all this? Eh, no. In a nutshell; I think the direction and content of the album as well as the decision to release Colors after Morning Phase was influenced by the fact that the overwhelming response to a skilled artist winning one of the music industry's highest awards****** resulted in the majority of the public asking "who's this guy who is almost 50 and who we've never heard of who just beat Beyonce for the best album released in the entirety of 2014. I don't care if you're a time-travelling space alien like Beck, that's got to get through, and it's got to sting, at least a bit.

I should probably review this thing, huh?

Colors is an album made of and for the zeitgeist. Sadly, while the zeitgeist can be colorful, it can also be hyperactive and vapid. From start to finish, the album is rife with the same overused and mundane concepts and assertions that've plagued the music industry since its inception. "Put it up in the air / if you don't really care", "just wanna stay up all night with you / nothing that I wouldn't rather do", "it's my life, your life / live it once, can't live it twice"*******, "what I need is right in front of me", and so on. Here's the thing though, even if 90% of the lyrics here are just fluff, a lot of the songs are catchy, if not good.
I don't hate this album. I hate...what it is and why it is, the need for it and the music it reflects and mimics. There are good, well-crafted, pop-as-fuck songs here. "Dreams" (the original, not the blander album mix) and "Up All Night" should be on every summer mix tape for at least the next five years, "Dear Life" is solid and would fit nicely on other, better Beck albums, "Square One" and"Wow" are fun (but the latter isn't nearly as weird as seemingly every other review claims it is. There's one "weird" line in it and that accounts for five seconds of a forty five minute album. Fucking get over it and make sure you don't listen to Midnite Vultures or your heads will explode), and "I'm So Free" needs to be on the radio forever.
And hey, if Beck wants to make an album where every song is crafted to be purchased by movie studios or car companies and featured in commercials or trailers or bland CW dramas, who am I to get mad when he does? He's got kids and, apparently, musical genius and Grammy awards don't pay for college. Going from there, as I was listening to Colors for the first time, I could actually see the commercials in which each song would be used and took notes. 

"Colors" - iPhone 8 Color announce or new Canon printer, something where they're trying to sell the idea of "color" as a new invention or product

"Seventh Heaven" -  CW teen drama prom dance song as credits roll; our introverted hero just found out his mother has cancer but she told him to go to the dance anyway and to ask the girl he likes to dance with him and he does and she does - full disclosure - this might be because of the old WB show of the same name, but I've never actually seen an episode so...I don't know.

"I'm So Free" - sugar-free chewing gum commercial, both because the gum is sugar...free and also because chewing gum makes one feel free. Or maybe some smartphone plan that has free long distance.

 "Dear Life" - ABC pilot about a bartender/burgeoning stand up comic, used as the theme or maybe an extended intro. Is the show called "Dear Life"? Patton Oswalt would have been offered and would have turned down this show. But Joel McHale might not have...

"No Distraction" - specifically the bridge and chorus - used in the first act of the inevitable sequel to NERVE, before shit gets dark - driving through a city at night, perhaps with someone yelling out the window about how great the night is going to be

"Dreams" -  is there a sequel to Inside Out? If not, definitely something by Pixar. Probably just in the trailer though.

"Wow" might be the only track too "out there" for typical ad agencies. That's not to say it's not viable, just that I'm not a fucking copywriter. Whatever it gets used for it will have the spec "urban".

"Up All Night" - oh, I don't know...maybe, like, a watch commercial?

"Square One" - in the fourth sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary in a scene where her daughter is having a fun girls' night out but she's in love with one of her girl friends? Was Bridget Jones's baby a chick? Can we rewrite that?

"Fix Me" - "hip", "cool" life insurance ad for 30-somethings. My wife suggested that one and it clicks audibly for me.

I was going to go as far as to record little fake commercials using these tracks in these situations, but that felt shitty. Plus, I'm lazy.

My hope is that Colors will prove to the idiot tastemakers, the vaping and vapid Millennial masses, Twitter********, car company ad execs and to himself that he can be as banal, mundane, and relevant as the rest of what's drifting in the cultural septic tank that is pop music. Then he can get back to being Beck, unfettered, and continue making real music for no one but hiss founky self.
And me.

* Not Gibson's worst movie, but certain scenes reminded me too much of Jacob's Ladder, plus he's still a rapey, anti-Semitic piece of shit and no one seems to remember that anymore.

** In my mind, and with regards to the amount of material they've both got backlogged, I equate Beck to a funkier Richard D. James.

*** I used to be in my twenties, so shush.

**** Or "proof", I suppose.

***** Obviously this doesn't apply to each and every single person born between 1982 and 2004 (or whatever the definition of a "Millennial" is). I know a lot of Millennials and a lot of them they kind of hate the label and fight against it, but for every Millennial I know who is not a piece of shit, I know a dozen who are.

****** Kind of. To some people anyway.

******* aka "YOLO". Ugh.

******** Seriously though, I feel like the marketing budget for this album could offset more than one third world country's debt. But hey, check out that custom Beck hashtag!!!!