{"id":1133,"date":"2015-10-16T09:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T08:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2015-10-14T09:45:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T08:45:01","slug":"song-of-the-week-loser-by-beck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=1133","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Week: &#8220;Loser&#8221; by Beck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.<\/p>\n<p>This is &#8220;Loser&#8221; by Beck:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YgSPaXgAdzE\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>For no good reason &#8220;Loser&#8221; popped into my head late a couple nights ago.\u00a0 Back in 1994 I was a teenager and Beck released three albums, all of which my friends and I loved: <em>Mellow Gold <\/em>(Geffen), <em>Stereopathetic Soulmanure <\/em>(Flipside), and <em>One Foot in the Grave <\/em>(K Records). &#8220;Loser&#8221; was the first single on <em>Mellow Gold<\/em>, and being the album on the major label, was the song\/album that made the guy famous. A couple of my friends swore by <em>Stereopathetic Soulmanure<\/em>, but I think that was in part a pose against the sudden popularity of Beck (though let&#8217;s be frank, we&#8217;d only heard of him the same way as everybody else). Over the next couple of years, <em>One Foot in the Grave<\/em> became my favorite of the three, and still is, but at the time, I listened to <em>Mellow Gold<\/em> like I wanted to wear out the tape (which I might have; I don&#8217;t remember. I wore out a lot of tapes).<\/p>\n<p>An adult at the time asked me, when I was singing &#8220;Loser&#8221; to myself, what I thought the line, &#8220;In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey&#8221; meant; did I think it was about being a misfit, etc., etc.? I replied something like, &#8220;I don&#8217;t think it really means anything.&#8221; Twenty-one years later, I still don&#8217;t, but I still like it just as much.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Loser%22%20by%20Beck\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it. This is &#8220;Loser&#8221; by Beck: For no good reason &#8220;Loser&#8221; popped into my head late a couple nights ago.\u00a0 Back in 1994 I was a teenager and Beck released three albums, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Loser%22%20by%20Beck\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-week","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1135,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions\/1135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}