No one took advantage of the CD single and compilation format better than Beck did in the 1990’s. The preeminent, shape shifting artist went well beyond changing styles between albums, he did so nearly weekly in his prime in the early ‘90s, even through the new millennium. In 1994, his first year as a success he spent the majority of it out on the road. During that time he recorded Pavement style indie songs, free association raps, and sample-delic style inventions. What’s most impressive is that this was done while working on his regular studio albums. These songs would end up finding homes on various singles, compilations, and bootlegs. He was infamous for stockpiling material but most of it was done off the clip. Hidden away on these releases were some of Beck’s most confounding and beautiful tracks.
A child of the ‘70s who was molded by thrift store culture, cut-out records, early electro hip-hop, synthesizer records, punk music, folk music and its ethos (or its inversion), and playing with rock mythos somehow molded all of it into a highly specific style. He was one of the few artists who truly deserved the genre tag of Alternative Rock. Between Stereopathic Soulmanure, Mellow Gold, and One Foot In The Grave, the man had already outshone his peers, not only in pure scope, but in execution of genre proliferation. Merging boom bap, analogue synths, samplers, and his own lexicon, Beck delivered this music album after album, with so many songs spilling over from late night sessions and collaborations it only made sense to put them out every few months.  The only way to do that back then justifiably was via compilation and on singles.
This playlist is assuming you are already familiar with his main albums and even the singles. I am choosing to look beyond that to show that Beck had even more interesting and bizarre expeditions outside of his main deliveries.
The tracks on this playlist come from his releases ranging from A Western Harvest Field By Moonlight to Midnight Vultures. By the time the early ‘00s came around, the need and utility of the CD single—and to a lesser extent vinyl—was rendered useless by free downloads, nascent streaming, and the internet's ability to deliver media faster and faster. He became more invested in remixes and collaboration than ever before. While he never stopped recording, storing music, or giving it a place to live on his albums’ deluxe editions or on compilations, he truly defied logic and the medium of physical media in the 1990s. His 2000s excursions deserve their own playlist and discussion.
It’s always difficult for to come up with a way to quite describe that weirdly specific style and tone Beck touched upon in the ‘90s; whether you want to call it ironic record mash-up rock, or collage music, but he—better than anyone else— truly synthesized what the early ‘90s felt like from the perspective of a kid who grew up in a mass media world of high and low class, through a trash wasteland of poor East L.A., and he came up with pure gold. His references, lyrics, album artwork, samples, tone, instrumentation choice, and songwriting styles better reflected his generation than others who came before it. Nirvana and their peers often struggled to get out of their own image and skin. They were defined by genre and style. Beck was the rare other, one who defied genre and style.