Everything but the Kitchen Sink continued
Beck
The singer and songwriter Beck is known to blend virtually every genre of popular music into his songs. His music is eclectic and diverse, and individual songs are very different from each other and a single song may include multiple layers of sounds borrowed from different genres, or the same song may veer from genre to genre. Beck might reference hip-hop, classical music, folk music, and country rock within the same song. In most of his songs, he delivers the lyrics in a style that is halfway between rapping and singing, but at times he sings in a more melodic style.
Additionally, Beck's music often features samples of spoken or sung lyrics from other recordings, and Beck states or sings the sampled words against the sample.
In the early 1990s, Beck recorded several albums on independent labels in Southern California. In 1993, his single "Loser ♫," which was recorded on the independent label Bong Load Custom Records, began attracting significant admiration from local audiences. "Loser ♫" mixes the slide guitar sounds of blues, the sitar of psychedelic rock, and a sampled drum part, with quasi-rapped verses and bizarre, surreal lyrics. His music drew the attention of the major label Geffen, and after signing with Geffen, Beck rereleased "Loser ♫." The single cracked the top 10 in the United States and the top 15 in the United Kingdom.
Beck’s contract with Geffen was very flexible, and he was able to exercise total creative freedom over his recordings as well as continue to release material on independent record labels. The first album he released on Geffen was Mellow Gold (1994). With the popularity of "Loser ♫," the album sold over a million copies. Beck’s next album was 1996’s Odelay, and he collaborated with producers Mike Simpson and John King, better known as the Dust Brothers. The Dust Brothers had a strong background in hip-hop, which meant that many songs on Odelay have the samples, loops, and strong beats that are commonly found in hip-hop music. At the same time, Beck included an incredibly eclectic mix of instruments in addition to the samples, including acoustic and electric guitars, pedal steel guitar, several different electric keyboards, harmonica, and saxophones and trumpets. For example, the single "Where It’s At ♫" mixes electric keyboards, trumpets and saxophones, drum samples, samples of lyrics from a variety of different sources, and the sounds of record scratching.
With each additional album that he released, Beck adopted a new sound and style. Mutations (1998) did not include any sampled sounds, a stark contrast to Odelay. Instead, Beck and producer Nigel Godrich created a sound that melded sounds of blues, psychedelic rock, and Brazilian bossa nova. Midnite Vultures (1999) is heavily influenced by the sounds of funk, the Velvet Underground, David Bowie, and the Krautrock sounds of Kraftwerk. In the 2000s, Beck returned to samples and a hip-hop inspired sound for several albums. For example, 2008’s Modern Guilt was co-produced by Beck and hip-hop producer Danger Mouse, but Modern Guilt includes several songs with a variety of stylistic and generic influences. For example, "Gamma Ray ♫" has a surf rock guitar line, and "Soul of a Man ♫" has the weight, distortion, and riffs of heavy metal.
Beck and Radiohead are just two examples of artists from the 1990s and 2000s who successfully combined multiple styles and genres in their music.
In 1999, Rage Against the Machine ordered donuts for 300 police officers who protested them outside a show in Massachusetts.
