Beck Releases Danceable Single ‘Wow’ in Advance of New Album
Beck released "Wow," his first new solo single since 2015's upbeat "Dreams," today (June 2) following a series of artist-created promotional snippets via Instagram. "Wow" certainly boasts a similarly contemporary, dance-focused vibe. Check it out above.
"It's like wow / It's like right now," Beck says during the chorus, beginning with a wacky hip-hop verse straight out of 1996's Odelay: "Wanna move into / A fool's gold room / With my pearls and the animal jewels." The song elsewhere rhymes "standing on your lawn doing jiu-jitsu" with "girl in a bikini with the Lamborghini shih tzu."
"Wow" advances an as-yet-unnamed full-length studio followup to 2014's far-more-somber, Grammy-winning Morning Phase. “We’ve been working on this a few years,” Beck tells Zane Lowe, “so this body of songs has this energy I think will be very good for our live shows.”
Among the artists who participated in Beck's advance Instagram campaign were Nathan Jurevicius, Eric Landon, Andrew Kuttler and Alicia Ward – the latter of whom heaped praise on "Wow." “The song is about the moments in life that leave you in awe of the world,” Ward said, also via Instagram.
Morning Phase was presented as a companion piece to 2002's Sea Change, and found Beck paired again with several of the same musicians. His newer sessions break that mold, too. Beck shares the mic on "Wow" with rapper OG Maco, who mentioned collaborating on "an amazing record" back in March. Beck has also recently worked with Flume and the Chemical Brothers.
Beck's next album, due Oct. 21 via Capitol Records, was produced by Greg Kurstin, a veteran of Beck's Sea Change-era live band. “We have half of another record, too, hopefully,” Beck adds.
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