Charles Jensen | Writer

Everyone approaches a song with their own baggage and their own ideas. It’s weird; at the time I was writing “Loser,” I was really into Dada. I was reading a lot about André Breton, Tristan Tzara, and Duchamp. And I was big on Artaud and the Theater of the Absurd. So, in my mind, “Loser” also had those influences. But not a lot of people picked up on that because it wasn’t wearing it on its sleeve. It was being filtered into some kind of haphazard rap song. Even the video for “Loser” was partly a take on Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert. But if someone’s radar only goes as far as The Brady Bunch, that’s what’s going to get reflected back at you.

Beck, from an interview in The Believer, June/July.