Loser

Beck recorded himself playing slide guitar on a four track for about an hour. Then the guy he was working with Took part of the noodling and added a drum loop that became the main riff we know and love.

Beck then started rapping stupidly on top of the looped guitar riff, completely improvising. He was so embarrassed at the lyrics that he'd come up with that he just started singing 'I'm a Loser baby' in the chorus.

Beck wrote this as a starving folk-artist on a serious funk. Most of the dumb animal metaphors (monkeys vs. chimps, pigeons, turkeys) reflect his low self-image, his impulsive nature at the time. He's also feeling a bit burned by false promises from a phony society (don't believe everything that you breathe: they're chimps, they're a ditching girlfriend, they're an evil bozo nightmare that doesn't like his cynical lyrics, yet creates the low-class world he lives in). Growing more cynical, time's candle is wearing down and he's stuck in the wax, a miniscule termite choking on lifeless, impoverished matter--a mere scavenger like the urban pigeon. But like the great satirists, he's an artist that pokes fun at the raw hand he's been dealt. The fun, hip, carefree beat and free-style hip-hop rhymes tells us that he's a clown, smiling at his own misery--and the satire is what is going to keep him going. He refuses to go away, daring the gas-chamber society--or his girlfriend--to kill him. Another interpretation is that "the loser" image is a degenerate illusion created by society, and he's thrusting a middle finger at it.

Maybe its all about donuts

Why write a song that makes sense if your a loser? Nobody would care to listen, so why not have some fun? There's meaning to madness, after all...

I think the whole point of Beck's music, especially his early stuff, is to make fun of postmodernism.

And for those of you who think every song ever written is about drugs need to LAY OFF The FUCKING ACID!

Get crazy with the cheese whiz!

I think he's more making fun of the grunge trend, where the general sentiment was "I'm a loser, etc."

PS: Beck is not stupid now. Odelay is his best album, and although midnight vultures was a little disappointing, it's still good.

These is a great song, that I've thought long and hard about its meaning. About ten years ago I think I understood what he's saying in the first stanza.

Beck is playing a lot with language in a very poetic way. Parts of words are sometimes the point of the word and he uses sarcastic nicknames for other things. He also uses words that sound alike (homonyms) to make double entendres.

A lot of the first stanza is a first person story about car racing in his Mustang.

The time of chimpanzees was the late 1970s and early 80s, when the coolest cars around were the Datsun 280Zs (the "zees").

He's saying that back then he was a [grease] monkey (a mechanic or someone who works on cars).

Butane is a fuel gas that an engine could be modified to use for racing (or it could just be another terms for gasoline) and the veins that it's running through are the fuel lines of the car.

He's racing against a junkie car (or junkheap) with plastic headlights, spraying (maybe mud on) the vegetables (brain dead people) watching.

The car breaks down.

"Dog food" is his dead Mustang because when a horse dies, pet food companies grind it up to make dog food. He's insulting to and mad at his car because it stalls (a side reference to horse stalls) with a burst hose (a beefcake pantyhose).

He tells himself to stop stressing. "Kill the headlights" (don't think about it, in a double entendre) "and put it in neutral" (idle for a bit, you can't do anything about it at the moment anyway).

The stock car (he's stock car racing) flamed out. It's just a car with a loser at the wheel and it's in the pit crew's control (cruise control).

He then changes scenarios (or not).

His girlfriend is in Reno in the sun (you get vitamin D from sunshine). She couch surfs there or has sex with different men for a place to stay. But he's in the "love seat" (she loves him).

If he's still talking about his car, then he's saying that the car is in Reno with the sun. A couch is a seat or a row of seats. The Mustang has two rows of seats with a bench seat in the back and bucket seats in front. He's in the driver's seat.

People tell him he shouldn't complain about racing. He's been complaining about being married to the shotgun (starter pistol) and the clothes (he's got a grease stain on his shirt or the mechanic's patch or sponsor's logo).

He's now talking to himself, saying, if you believe everything that comes out of your own mouth (everything that you breathe, i.e. the complaints he's been making about the racing life), then you'll stop moving (get a parking violation) and settle down and have a kid (a maggot on your sleeve, he doesn't like children).

So keep on taking the risks. Get a close shave with some ace in the dark (a racing opponent). Keep being poor (on food stamps) and burning (rubber) down in the trail or park (the trailer park).

But he doesn't win, so he doesn't feel great. He's self-condescending. He feels like a loser - such a loser that he's got to tell us that in two languages.

The second stanza is about different things, that I don't really have a handle on all the way.

Here are some thoughts: A phony gas chamber is someone who's full of bull.

One's on the pole (a woman working a strip club or on her period), shove the other in a bag (put a condom on the man).

My time is a piece of wax - My time is making records (used to use wax to make LPs, look it up) or my time becomes the record. Anyway, he's talking about his music. Falling on a termite. A termite is a reference to a baby boomer. Who's choking on a splinter - who's choking because he can't believe he's hearing this great music from a gen Xer.

Get crazy with the cheese, Wiz. Get crazy with the flourishes, wizard.

Drive by body pierce is a drive-by shooting.

This song is basically just stating anything and everything that's pathetic and will make one say "Wow, that's dumb. What loser!" for example: "in the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey" (chimpanzees eat some monkeys) "got a couple of couches, sleep on the love seat" (why would you sleep on a love seat when there's 2 couches??) "my time is a piece of wax falling on a termite that's choking on the splinters" (one of the best analagies in the song. Wax melts very quickly. If it falls on a termite the termite will die a slow and freak-accident death. Termites eat wood, making a termite choking on splinters extremely pathetic. That's almost as bad as a human choking on air)

This is a great song and it is without coherent logic or grammar, however, everyone saying that Beck is always like this needs to take a long look at "Sea Change" - the lyrics are crystal clear and devestating.

yeah this is a good song, i think beck is getting better with age. hopefully the new album will be as good as odelay