Odelay is the fifth studio album by American musician Beck, released on June 18, 1996, by DGC Records. The album featured several successful singles, including "Where It's At", "Devils Haircut", and "The New Pollution", and peaked at number sixteen on the Billboard 200. As of July 2008, the album had sold 2.3 million copies in the United States, making Odelay Beck's most successful album to date.
Recording
Beck approached
Odelay with trepidation. "I thought
Odelay might be the last time I got a chance to make a record,” he told
Rolling Stone in 2008.
The sessions for what would become Odelay originally began as a subdued, Acoustic music affair. In 1994, Beck started to record tracks for his follow-up to Mellow Gold with Bong Load producers Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf. Together, they recorded the melancholy album-closer "Ramshackle."
Title and artwork
The title is a phonetic English rendering of the
Mexican Spanish slang interjection "
órale", which translates roughly to "cool" or "ok". The phrase "odelay" is repeated in the lyrics during the outro of the song "Lord Only Knows". According to
Stephen Malkmus, the title is a pun on
Oh Delay, since the album took very long to record.
The album's cover is a photo of a
Komondor, a rare
Hungary breed of dog with a heavy, corded coat, jumping over a hurdle. The original photo was shot by canine photographer Joan Ludwig (1914–2004) for the July 1977 issue of the American Kennel Club's
Gazette.
Tour
The promotional tour for the album began in May–June 1996, appearing in several record stores and radio stations in the
United States Throughout the rest of the year followed numerous U.S. tours and European festival dates.
As the tour continued into 1997, Beck began playing larger venues in America. The tour unofficially ended on September 5, 1997, with a taped band performance at "Sessions at West 54th" in New York,
It was on the Odelay tour that Beck earned a wide reputation as an energetic and impeccable performer, and his profile rose after multiple appearances on MTV, The Howard Stern Show,
Deluxe edition
On January 29, 2008,
Odelay – Deluxe Edition was released. The two-disc set contains the original album, plus 19 B-sides, remixes and previously unreleased songs.
The liner notes feature complete lyrics and artwork, as well as an essay from
Thurston Moore and the transcript of 15 high school students interviewed by
Dave Eggers.
Critical reception
Upon release,
Odelay received almost unanimous critical acclaim. At the 39th Annual Grammy Awards in 1997, it was nominated for the
Grammy Award for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Music Album, as well as Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Where It's At".
was named the best album of the year in
Rolling Stone,
s Pazz & Jop critics' poll,
and
NMEs annual critics poll.
In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine observed that, like Mellow Gold, Odelay incorporated elements from various genres, including "Folk music and Country music, grunge garage rock, stiff-boned electro, louche exotica, old-school rap and noise rock."
Legacy
In 1998,
Q magazine readers voted
Odelay the 51st greatest album of all time. It was voted as one of the top 10 pop albums of the 1990s by the music writers of The Associated Press.
It was ranked No. 16 in
Spin's "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005".
The music website
Pitchfork ranked it at No. 19 on their top 100 albums of the 1990s in 2003
and No. 93 in their updated Top 150 list in 2022.
ranked the album No. 306 in their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2009,
and later ranked it No. 424 in the 2023 edition,
as well as No. 9 on its 2019 list of the 100 best albums of the '90s.
Voters in Channel 4's 2005 "100 Greatest Albums" poll placed it at No. 73.
In 2000, Odelay was ranked No. 54 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.
Track listing
Personnel
Credits adapted from 2008 "Deluxe Edition" CD liner notes.
-
Beck – vocals (1–13), guitar (1–2, 4, 6, 8–12), bass guitar (1–4, 6–12), harmonica (1–2, 6–7), organ (1, 4–6, 8, 10), slide guitar (2–3), clavinet (2, 4), Moog synthesizer (2, 5–6, 9, 12), electric guitar (3, 7), acoustic guitar (3, 7, 13), mbira (5), drums (5), rhumba box (5), tambourine (5), shakers (5), electric piano (6–8), xylophone (7), turntablism (9), conga (10), echoplex (12), percussion (12)
Additional musicians
-
Dust Brothers – turntables (1–2, 6, 8, 12), 808 drum machine (6, 12)
-
Ross Harris – wizard (2), child (2)
-
Joey Waronker – drums (3, 6, 9, 13), percussion (3, 9, 12–13), tubular bells (9)
-
Mike Millius – scream (3)
-
Paolo Diaz – (5)
-
Mike Boito – clavinet (6), trumpet (8), organ (8, 10, 12)
-
David Brown – saxophone (8)
-
Money Mark – organ (8)
-
Eddie Lopez – outro talking (8)
-
Greg Leisz – pedal steel (10)
-
Charlie Haden – double bass (13)
Technical
-
Beck Hansen – producer, mixing (1–12); art direction, design
-
Dust Brothers – producers, mixing (1–8, 10–12)
-
Mario Caldato, Jr. – producer, mixing (9)
-
Brian Paulson – producer, mixing (9)
-
Tom Rothrock – producer, mixing (13)
-
Rob Schnapf – producer, mixing (13)
-
Bob Ludwig – mastering
-
Shauna O'Brien – project coordinator
-
Robert Fisher – art direction, design
-
Ludwig – cover photo
-
Nitin Vadukul – Beck photos
-
Charlie Gross – Beck photos, collage images
-
Alison Dyer – Beck photos
-
Manuel Ocampo – inlay paintings, collage images
-
Al Hansen – collage images
-
Zarim Osborn – collage images
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications
Further reading
External links
