Sonic markers: on the symbolic quality of recorded sound

Technology's unquestionable impact upon the development of popular music has benefitted from the various perspectives applied to it in popular music research. Mark Katz, for example, coins the term ‘phonograph effect’ to describe how music technology impacted musical output – in short, he writes, it ‘encouraged new ways of listening to music, led performers to change their practices and allowed for entirely new musical genres to come into existence’ (Katz Reference Katz2004, p. 5). In their more music-specific narrative, Eric Clarke and Nicola Dibben note that ‘[m]usical materials have a “history of use”, one consequence of which is that sounds are heard as cultural references and associations’ (Clarke and Dibben Reference Clarke and Dibben2000, p. 233). Clarke and Dibben demonstrate the way in which Pulp's ‘This is Hardcore’ in fact represents a ‘critique that entails an element of complicity’ (Clarke and Dibben Reference Clarke and Dibben2000, p. 240), not only through its lyrics and imagery but also, and to a large extent, through the cultural references mobilised by its musical materials. Along similar lines, Stan Hawkins conceptualised the stylistic appropriation of musical material in the Robbie Williams song ‘Let Me Entertain You’: ‘Williams’ performance is not only pure spoof of 1970s rock, but also an example of camp, excess and self-parody’ (Hawkins Reference Hawkins2009, p. 67). In this way, although they never state so directly, these examples all imply the appropriation or re-contextualisation of musical materials coded within the popular canon of Western music history. The meanings of both ‘This is Hardcore’ and ‘Let Me Entertain You’ are powerfully impacted by their ‘borrowing’ of musical materials, which in some way or another evokes a history of use. To different ends, then, the meanings of both of these tracks depend upon the construction of sonic markers.

Albin Zak characterises technology's profound impact upon recorded music this way: ‘In the recording studio, musicians’ styles take on a symbolic quality, signifying a particular set of associations. This is another element in the rhetoric of record making’ (Zak Reference Zak2001, p. 52). Taking this a step further, the present article looks at the ways in which artists and producers, or what Zak refers to as ‘recordists’ (Zak Reference Zak2001, p. xii), take advantage of these symbolic qualities of recorded sound as they compose – in this case, the ways in which Beck propels his whole musical identity via this kind of sonic symbolism. As Zak concludes: ‘[I]t is sound recording that gives recordists their voice, and it is to records that they appeal, consciously or not, for guidance in shaping the articulation of their own sensibility’ (Zak Reference Zak2001, p. 196).

I'm a loser, baby …

Beck plunged into the realm of commercial pop with his single ‘Loser’ in 1994, immediately nuancing the extremely popular early 1990s grunge sound of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and others, first and foremost with a new, ‘slacker’ attitude.Footnote ² Abandoning the grunge markers of droning electric guitars and what Jacqueline Warwick has described as ‘emotively growling vocals’ (Warwick Reference Warwick and Scott2009, p. 352), Beck re-contextualised musical codes from hip-hop and blues as constituent elements, or sonic markers, of his own lo-fi universe. Arranged around a sampled drumbeat and a repetitive slide guitar hook, ‘Loser’ somewhat serendipitously captured the apparently laid-back, self-ironic attitude that Beck would own from that point forward. In an interview with Mark Kemp for Option in 1994, Beck explained:

Coincidentally or otherwise, the narrative of ‘Loser’ directly incorporates its two most obvious musical gestures – Beck's slide guitar hook and the sampled drumbeat. Indeed, both gestures can be further read as generic codes for different realms of popular music. Slide guitar, especially when played on an acoustic guitar, as Beck does here, evokes what is often referred to as the delta blues, which is associated with artists such as Son House, Robert Johnson and, later, Muddy Waters (see, for example, Cowley Reference Cowley1981).Footnote ³

The drumbeat, on the other hand, was sampled from Johnny Jenkins's track ‘I Walk on Gilded Splinters’ (1972).Footnote ⁴ By the 1990s, sampling aesthetics had already gained a history of use in hip-hop, so this sound alone is not sufficient for the beat to serve as a sonic marker. If we take the sonic qualities of this beat into account, however, its grainy timbre indicates that some further form of purposeful preparation has taken place. It has likely been sampled and slowed down in tempo, lowering its pitch and causing its graininess, and it is this disruptive act of sampling that represents the more powerful code here, evoking, as it does, the fact that 1990s hip-hop had reached a point where it had extended the notion of sampling to any genre at any time. In addition to ‘Loser’, this particular beat also underpins tracks as various as the Beastie Boys’ ‘Pass the Mic Pt. 2’ (1992), Enigma's ‘Why’ (1996), Blackalicious's ‘A to G’ (1999) and Oasis's ‘Go Let it Out’ (2000) – obviously the very same beat can be part of many different musical contexts, composed of a number of distinct elements. How, then, does this drumbeat play its part as a sonic marker in ‘Loser’? The answer resides in Beck's vocalisation, which offers a filter through which to hear these gestures as sonic markers. Using Beck's voice as a temporarily fixed pivot point, those markers become constructed intertextually with reference to time on two levels – separately, the level outside of ‘Loser’ (the Delta blues; the 1970s), and together, the level of or within ‘Loser’ (the mid-1990s).

David Hesmondhalgh (Reference Hesmondhalgh, Born and Hesmondhalgh2000) suggests that digital-sampling technologies have contributed to a reconfiguration of the acts of cultural borrowing and appropriation. He focuses specifically on electronic music that samples ‘non-Western’ sources – the band Fun-da-mental, for example, samples sounds from Hindi film music, muezzin wails and quawwali singing, then mixes them with a Jamaican vocal styling atop beats that conform to the generic conventions of North American hip-hop. Such musical borrowings invite various and powerful ideological interpretations; according to Hesmondhalgh, Fun-da-mental's work demonstrates ‘an explicit allegiance to African American Islamic radicalism, and to the black separatist politics of groups such as the Black Panthers’ (Hesmondhalgh Reference Hesmondhalgh, Born and Hesmondhalgh2000, p. 284). The band's samples strengthen their political message by referencing the music of the Other, while their method strengthens that message by evoking other political hip-hop acts, such as Public Enemy. Anne Danielsen (Reference Danielsen2008) argues, as well, that much of the communicative potential in Public Enemy's music lies not so much in the sounds (or words) themselves as in the sonic montage they create: ‘Public Enemy uses the expressivity of the successful montage to communicate something more about power relations and inequality in American society that is fundamentally richer than any exclusively verbal text could manage’ (Danielsen Reference Danielsen2008, p. 415). In these cases, sampling plays a major role in conveying a specific political intent and thus positioning these bands with reference to concrete sonic markers.

Arguably, Beck's appropriations gain their currency by virtue of their juxtaposition, in ways not unlike Fun-da-mental and Public Enemy. However, they are seldom borrowed from the Other's music and therefore do not display an explicitly political intent. Via the notion of retronormativity, I aim to illustrate what they do display – that is, the extent to which Beck's musical identity is built on musical appropriations, often through sampling, and the ways in which these appropriations become signs of his musical innovation. This is not to suggest that appropriation equals innovation. Instead, appropriation might best be seen as a central component in the process of innovation. As Middleton has argued, any form of musical innovation must begin with an awareness of existing conventions (Middleton Reference Middleton1990, p. 90) – an awareness that Beck clearly displays in his widespread appropriation. Beck's innovative qualities rely a great deal on his ability to juxtapose sonic markers from different styles and eras, and to make them work as a musical whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The key to his identity construction, in fact, is his play with various musical settings, as first becomes clear upon a brief review of his back catalogue.

Sampling aesthetics: Odelay

One might begin looking at Beck's discography by asking whether it is possible to discern a relationship between his use of sonic markers and his alignments with particular producers. Although Beck has collaborated with many producers (including Danger Mouse, Tony Hoffer, Mickey Petralia, Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock), it is the Dust Brothers (Mike Simpson and John King) and Nigel Godrich who seem to have had the greatest respective impacts upon the construction of his musical identity.Footnote ⁵ Initially, we can see this through the evident differences in their production ideals. Broadly speaking, while the Dust Brothers celebrate sample-based productions, Godrich strives to document a live performance in the studio, or at least construct an image of that documentary ideal.

This distinction, however, is not always so clear cut, and Jason Toynbee's conceptualisation of the technosphere can help us here. As a ‘domain of imaginary possibilities and constraints which lies between the performance on one side and more or less remote reception of sound on the other’ (Toynbee Reference Toynbee2000, p. 69), the technosphere represents a framework for creativity and tolerance towards the use of technology (as opposed to or in the service of a more documentary approach) in a recording. Toynbee demonstrates how this framework is constantly developing alongside the audience's tolerance for what might be considered documentary in the first place: ‘At stake here is not so much an opposition as a continuum between musician-audience co-presence on the one hand and various kinds of distantiation and manipulation of sound on the other’ (Toynbee Reference Toynbee2000).

Given the disparateness of influence of the Dust Brothers and Godrich upon Beck's music, this continuum is highly relevant to the present discussion, and it is worth considering the extent to which the relationship between musical output and production ideals contributes to Beck's identity. One obvious Dust Brothers influence upon Beck is their sample-based aesthetic (among their countless credits is the Beastie Boys’ 1989 album Paul's Boutique, a virtuoso example of sampling). In relation to its extensive use of sampled drum beats and non-musical sounds and noises, Rolling Stone (2003) described Odelay, Beck's first collaboration with the Dust Brothers, as follows:

Released as the album's first single, ‘Where It's At’ is constructed around an Am7 Wurlitzer hook, a looped drumbeat and Beck's slightly nasal, laid-back rapping in the baritone register. Noise elements, mostly created through feedback from vocals filtered by a distorting megaphone, are especially prominent in the third verse and generally placed between the vocal lines. In fact, although the song contains a variety of decontextualised elements, musical as well as non-musical, each has a specific place in the mix, and their meanings do not blur into one another. Recurring spoken, noisy or musical gestures stay clear of the vocals as well, except for the megaphone effect in the choruses. In general, then, these elements do not change the narrative ‘direction’ of the song but rather suggest alternative meanings or opportunities along the way.

On one hand, the sound of the Wurlitzer might harken back to the 1960s or 1970s. This is because, alongside other stringless electric pianos such as the Fender Rhodes, the Wurlitzer figured as a central instrumental agent in the wake of electric jazz and soul in the 1960s.Footnote ⁷ This particular sound would thus evoke a specific history of use. On the other hand, Beck was certainly not alone in his own era of the 1990s in applying loops of old electric pianos to supply a harmonic foundation, so considering this element to be strictly a marker of the 1960s would be premature. For example, sample-based 1990s hip-hop and trip-hop acts such as Arrested Development, Digable Planets, Us3, Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack were all appropriating and experimenting with various forms of sample aesthetics in different ways.

Further strengthening the transparency of Beck's use of ‘old sounds’ – and at the same time hinting at old-school hip-hop – is the sound of the crackling that emerges from an LP player as the needle is dropped at the very beginning of a record. In this particular context, the LP crackling suggests a hip-hop DJ putting a record on, an impression that is further emphasised by the recurring lyrical line ‘I've got two turntables and a microphone’ in the choruses. According to Beck, this line is in fact ‘a tribute to the old house parties … I'm not talking about house music – I'm talking about the old-school rap house parties. We're talking two turntables and a microphone’ (Beck quoted in Jovanovic Reference Jovanovic2000, p. 87). In this way, the LP crackling contributes to the impression that the other sounds, such as the Wurlitzer hook or the drumbeat, might also have been sampled from an older recording and looped according to some ideological agenda. Additionally, the strategic musical use of noise evokes fellow 1990s bands such as Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. Rather than merely appearing as sonic markers of early recording history, then, these elements collectively form a basis for arguing that Beck builds his musical narratives, and moreover his entire musical identity, out of instruments and technologies with a certain credibility in multiple eras of popular music history – that is, sonic markers derived from and aligned with time.

Such markers of retronormativity are also present on the song ‘The New Pollution’, from the same album. Albin Zak has described Beck's music as a ‘kaleidoscope of references’, and ‘The New Pollution’ in particular as a ‘collage of Revolverisms’ because of the way it ‘combines allusions to the bassline from “Taxman”, the drum groove and ambience from “Tomorrow Never Knows”, and George Harrison's swooping Indian-influenced vocal style on “Love You Too”’ (Zak Reference Zak2001, p. 186). On one level, then, Zak suggests that Beck is delving deeply into a very specific source: a single album by the Beatles. On another level, Zak acknowledges the resonance between the compositional practices behind Revolver (‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was, in fact, a live recording of 11 tape loops conducted by George Martin (Lewisohn Reference Lewisohn1988, p. 72)) and Beck's own affinity for layering musical references in his work.Footnote ⁸ For Beck, it would appear, this form of layering through digital sampling and stylistic appropriation has become a compositional tool, demonstrating a way in which his use of sonic markers associated with time has played a part in the formation of his musical identity.

Folk futurist: Mutations and Sea Change

Beck's music, however, stretches beyond the realm of sampling aesthetics, as we can see most obviously from his equally successful affiliation with producer Nigel Godrich. In terms of production ideals, Godrich would ostensibly represent something close to the antithesis of the Dust Brothers. Beck himself notes that Godrich is ‘very much oriented to capturing a performance’ (Beck quoted in Lipton and Bee Reference Lipton and Bee1998),Footnote ⁹ although this may be somewhat tongue in cheek: this quote is from a promotional video interview Beck did for the launch of his album Mutations, and the interviewer is nothing more than a robotic voice. The short black-and-white film shows Beck sitting in a designer chair, discussing the recording process, his songwriting and his collaboration with Godrich. In this context, then, it is tempting to suggest that the idea of ‘capturing a performance’ could refer to both documentation and projection. Perhaps these production ideals are not so distinct for Godrich after all?

In fact, the juxtaposition of documentation and projection is apparent throughout Mutations, starting with its opening track, ‘Cold Brains’. The song opens with an acoustic guitar, sounding by itself for four bars. Drums, bass, wah-wah guitar and the bubbly sounds of an analogue synthesiser are introduced in the next four bars. As the song forms around the acoustic guitar riff, which is deliberately reinforced by the bass and drums, the synthesiser and wah-wah guitar begin to stick out as a subtle nod to psychedelia. These psychedelic allusions do not stem from the wah-wah guitar or the bubbly synthesiser alone but present as sonic markers because of the dialogic interplay between them in and of themselves (their sonic potential), on the one hand, and the setting in question (the musical context established around the acoustic guitar) on the other.

With regard to production ideals, Sea Change (2002), which was also produced by Godrich, represents an interesting comparison with Mutations. Beck has characterised both of these albums as ‘sort of introspective records’ (Beck, in Erlewine 2006), and each exhibits his predilection for simple arrangements based upon acoustic guitar and vocals. ‘Cold Brains’, in fact, shares a range of both compositional and production-aesthetic features with ‘Lost Cause’, the first single from Sea Change. One of these commonalities lies in the songs’ respective focus on harmony and melody, which, together with the lyrics, often receive more attention from the composer as well as the listener when the instrumental arrangement has been stripped down. These elements also provide a basis for reading this music as the result of a documented performance – from Toynbee's perspective, that is, they act as markers of a documentary tendency. For example, in ‘Cold Brains’, the verses, with D as their tonal centre, follow the chord progression D–A–G–C–D–A–G–G7. The choruses then start on A and move via D to F, a progression that is repeated twice before a four-bar conclusion on E. This would indicate two tonal centres for the song as a whole: D on the verses and A on the choruses. In ‘Lost Cause’, the tonal centre is C throughout the song. Here, the verses create a never-ending movement from F via C to G/B that is repeated three times before a conclusion on E7. The choruses move between F and G before landing on C every eighth bar. Thus, the harmonic tension that is built up in the verses is released to an extent in the choruses. In both songs, the harmonic focus becomes particularly prominent owing to what appears to be documentary production ideals, as well as the open arrangements forged around acoustic guitars.

‘Lost Cause’ is built around country-style fingerpicking on acoustic guitars, played in counterpoint to a clavinet part that is panned to the channel opposite the guitars. The two parts’ ever so slight similarity in timbre and rhythmic movement produce a calm yet quite dense sonic framework that is supported by accented first beats on a glockenspiel. The calmness is further reinforced by recurring backwards sounds, mostly in the form of what appears to be reversed recordings of voices or instruments. These backwards sounds, coupled with the stylistic framework suggested by the drums and acoustic guitars, become sonic markers with a narrative purpose in the context of Beck's vocalisation. Addressing this point in his review of Sea Change for Rolling Stone, David Fricke notes:

Fricke here assumes a clear connection between Beck's vocalisation and the fact that he had parted company with his girlfriend, an interpretation that was initially suggested by a good promotional campaign that acted to connect these dots for the press. In fact, the whole record was promoted as a response to this breakup, although several of the songs were written at earlier stages in his career – even as early as 1993. In an interview with Dave Maher for Pitchfork, Beck explains:

In this sense, ‘Lost Cause’ is a fitting example of how sonic markers construct musical settings that bring with them the potential for identity formation to take place. In a similar musical setting that has the opposite effect, the wah-wah guitars and synthesisers on ‘Cold Brains’ act as sonic markers that, in relation to the lyrics, underline an indifferent attitude towards death. These sonic markers hint at psychedelia in the way they relate to the lyrics – for example, through Beck's intimation that ‘misery waits in vague hotels’.

In terms of their effects, the two records could of course be distinguished in terms of the lyrical content and their apparent links to Beck's biography. Mutations, again in Toynbee's sense, represents what could be labelled a playful documentary tendency. Sea Change, while drawing on many of the same stylistic references, such as acoustic guitars, purportedly contains specific references to an incident that took place in Beck's private life. Beck has described his way of writing lyrics as ‘a pure thought process and disconnected poetry’ (Hoskyns Reference Hoskyns1997). Yet, there are still obvious intersections between his lyrics and the music's various meanings. Lines like ‘I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me’ or ‘MTV makes me want to smoke crack’ underline a general sense of indifference that one can hear as well as think about. On the other hand, ‘nobody's fault but my own’ and ‘misery waits in vague hotels’ present an ironic self-reflection that resonates with the hints of psychedelia he inserts into the generic conventions of the singer-songwriter tradition. In other words, Beck's catalogue is full of such apparent links between lyrics and biography.

Is change gonna come? Guero and The Information

In many ways, proof of drastic change is evident in the Dust Brothers/Beck collaboration Guero (2005) and the Godrich/Beck collaboration The Information, both of which return the artist to a sample-based aesthetic – or, at least, that is what was perceived in the reception of these records. In a fan-based fashion, long-time Beck follower Barney Hoskyns formulated it almost diplomatically:

Musically, this apparent lack of richness and strangeness might relate to Beck's less agitated vocal style. As Beck pointed out, Sea Change was not intended to represent a break in his career but simply a compilation of songs that depict, in general, the same mood. The songs, however, dated from 1993 to 2002 and did not relate exclusively from his breakup with his long-time girlfriend, as mentioned above. This returns us to the question of intent, with which many journalists struggled after this point. For example, the sense that something had changed in Beck's music following Sea Change informed reviews of his two later albums as well. Rob Mitchum, for example, in his review for Pitchfork, compares Guero with Odelay and concludes:

Here, Mitchum suggests that, akthough Beck applies many of the same compositional strategies and works with the same producers, the effect he achieves is no longer the same. Beck's play on different styles and genres was once (in the 1990s, presumably) read as a sign of irony and playfulness, but no more. As such, Mitchum's observations point in the same direction as those of Hoskyns – namely that, while comparisons between this new material and his earlier records are likely to be drawn, Beck's performative enthusiasm is nevertheless experienced as being curbed. This indicates the relevance of situating meaning within a particular historical and cultural context. While Beck apparently managed to construct an image of a borderless artist with fans and journalists in the 1990s, Sea Change marks a musical break in his career. If, as Stephen Thomas Erlewine suggests, Guero is ‘a successful mature variation on Odelay’ (Erlewine Reference Erlewine2006), then this newfound maturity should be possible to hear in his music as well.Footnote ¹²

An example of this further tendency can be found on ‘E-Pro’, the first single from Guero. Here, the musical setting is based on a looped drumbeat sampled from the Beastie Boys’ ‘So What'cha Want’ (1992).Footnote ¹³ Sauntering along at a medium tempo, the choruses consist of the sounds ‘Na na na-na-na-na na’, sung over a two-bar, four-note melody above a unison bass/guitar riff whose distorted timbre recalls the sound of the lead fuzz guitar of the Rolling Stones song ‘Satisfaction’ (see Gracyk Reference Gracyk1996, p. 124). The retronormative tendencies of this accompaniment recall the playfulness that characterised Beck's earlier collaborations with the Dust Brothers. They also suggest a comparison with Odelay in the first place. Yet the aspect that seems to lead Hoskyns and Mitchum to conclude the opposite is to be found within Beck's serene vocal performance and increasingly despondent lyrics in the later release.

The fact that this is an overarching tendency becomes clear from the similar responses that emerged after the release of The Information (2006). According to Beck, that album was the result of Godrich's sudden desire to produce hip-hop. The first single, ‘Cellphone's Dead’, represents an example of Beck bridging the production poles of documentation and projection. The most prominent sonic marker of time in this song encompasses the bass riff and drum part, which certainly recall Herbie Hancock's ‘Chameleon’ (1973), although they are not sampled. The drum part does sound sampled, however, partly because of its very high frequency spectrum. Again, these musical codes are constructed as sonic markers through appropriation. Vocally, Beck replaces his earlier ‘slack’ delivery with a delivery that is still relaxed but is now more distant. His rhythmic phrases suggest the sprechgesang tendencies of ‘old school’ rap – the half-spoken, half-sung delivery that characterises early hip-hop.

On the one hand, Beck's collaboration with different producers constitutes further play with the restrictive domains of the technosphere – that is, the framework of production ideals (or musical settings) that is implied by one's choice of producer. On the other hand, Beck would also be restricting his possibilities by making his use of sonic markers so explicit that they become equivalent to his musical identity. This might in fact be the reason for his flirtation with both hip-hop and folk references. In most vocals-based popular music, we hear the voice as the primary marker of the biographical presence of the song's protagonist (Frith Reference Frith1996, p. 166). With Beck (as exemplified in ‘Loser’, for example), there seems to be, in addition, a particularly strong relationship between the voice and the musical backdrop. To paraphrase Zak, I would suggest that Beck's kaleidoscopic attitude towards recording history – that is, his extensive play with sonic markers – has become a telltale sign of his biographical presence in his recordings. Alongside his voice, then, it is his play with sonic markers that has come to premise his musical identity.

So far, I have discussed Beck's music in relation to his collaboration with different producers, chiefly the Dust Brothers and Nigel Godrich. While certain musical elements seem to recur in both cases, it is his ironic take on indifference that identifies Beck as ‘Beck’, and he generally expresses this take via his voice. Although these tendencies have changed over time and with age, and although he constantly plays around with different idioms, such as rap, crooning and even a Prince-like falsetto, Beck's vocal delivery remains distinctive. Having now introduced the concept of retronormativity as a production strategy that has consistently contributed to the construction of Beck's musical identity regardless of context, I will seek to complicate this model through a close reading of one other song, ‘Sexx Laws’, the first single from Midnite Vultures (1999). In what follows I hope to demonstrate how Beck's retronormative eclecticism is locatable as a mark of musical identity at the level of a particular song's musical details.

‘Sexx Laws’

Uncut journalist Kit Aiken once described Beck's Midnite Vultures as ‘mountain music plus technology, down-home sounds and structures with art noise and street beats, brilliant-but-wearing typing-not-writing lyrics, rap, folk, hardcore, country’ (Aiken Reference Aiken1999). Jon Pareles of Rolling Stone focused on how the album, and especially ‘Sexx Laws’, contains a range of allusions to the 1970s:

Both of these quotations attest to Beck's retronormative play with style and content, which to a large degree derives from his playful attitude towards temporally coded musical sounds. In this way, as I have argued, Beck's construction of sonic markers of time has played an important part in forming his musical identity. In the following section, I will use ‘Sexx Laws’ to demonstrate how cultural references and associations are identifiable not only as sonic markers of each album but also through the ways in which these references and associations can be juxtaposed within individual songs. I argue that, as strategies of studio production and composition, these cultural references can be identified as sonic markers that serve a narrative purpose in Beck's music.

I want to focus on the musical staging of Beck with reference to how lyrics, melody and vocal performance relate to details of the production. I take the idea of staging a persona in popular music from Serge Lacasse (Reference Lacasse2000), who coined the term ‘vocal staging’ as a means to investigate the provocative power of technology over the singing voice in popular music. Rather than focusing merely on aspects of vocal production, I will extend the notion to musical staging in order to account for the interaction between vocal production and musical backdrop as well. For example, Beck's lyrics may often appear to be nonsensical, but his vocal performance and the song's melodic construction often supply a narrative when the lyrics do not. The lyrics, then, gain meaning in turn through the ways in which they are staged, technologically and performatively, to fit the music. At the same time, the apparently nonsensical lyrics in the verses make more sense when we arrive at the choruses. Here, Beck states his desire to ‘defy the logic of all sex laws’, then confesses that although he is ‘a full-grown man’, he is not ‘afraid to cry’. This statement is supported by both the aesthetics of the production, as we will see further below, and the quite complex vocal production, to which I will now turn.

While the song's octave doubling has been employed by a range of artists, from J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr) to Axl Rose (Guns'n'Roses), it has a unique impact upon the listener's expectations regarding Beck's pervasive detachment. Overdubbing oneself is often associated with detachment, mainly because two takes of the same voice can potentially erase the personal ‘grain’ of the individual voice. Freya Jarman-Ivens (Reference Jarman-Ivens2006), in her work on the Carpenters, links the overdubbing of Karen Carpenter's voice to her brother Richard's fascination with the Beach Boys’ perfectionism regarding vocal performance.Footnote ¹⁴ Notably, Jarman-Ivens remarks upon the way in which this overdubbing appears to blur the boundaries that Barthes sets up between what he labels pheno-song and geno-song and produce a form of ‘disembodied eroticism’ (Jarman-Ivens Reference Jarman-Ivens2006, p. 18ff). In the Carpenters’ music, vocal dubbing marked them as ‘unthreatening’, but Jarman-Ivens sees it further as a means of ‘taming the grain’ (Jarman-Ivens Reference Jarman-Ivens2006, p. 9ff) or otherwise abstracting the singer from her body via a technological ‘geno-process mediated through a pheno-process’ (Jarman-Ivens Reference Jarman-Ivens2006, p. 26).

Similarly, in ‘Sexx Laws’, Beck's play with vocal dubbing supplies the lyrics with their ironic detachment. If we are also to locate Jarman-Ivens's disembodied eroticism, we must look in the choruses. In the first four lines, Beck's voice appears as his regular baritone, overdubbed with a falsetto that appears to emphasise his ironic attitude. ‘At the halfway home’ is then presented in the baritone but overdubbed by one vocoder voice and two falsetto voices, after which ‘I'm a full grown man, but I'm not afraid to’ appears as Sprechgesang – a half-spoken, half-sung form of delivery.Footnote ¹⁵ This leads to a dubbed falsetto pronunciation of ‘cry’ which extends over more than four bars and lasts longer with each successive chorus. At this particular musical moment, which teeters on verge of hysteria, Beck appropriates a Prince-like falsetto.Footnote ¹⁶ While Prince might use exaggerated performance strategies in an attempt to blur race and gender norms (Hawkins Reference Hawkins2002, p. 170), Beck uses them further to mobilise the ironic distance he has already set up through his rapid-fire references to sonic markers. Coming directly after a Sprechgesang, this delivery of ‘cry’ comes across as decidedly ambiguous. Is Beck joking? Is he straining? Is he in pain? Is he actually crying? Moreover, while the Beck baritone then drops away, the two falsetto voices continue upwards towards a deranged shriek. Hawkins conceptualises this exaggerated form of affected vocalisation in Morrissey's performances as tropes of hyperbole, or ‘a communicative device’ that ‘underlines the artist's spirit of engagement, his idealism, his earnestness and ironic distancing on all matters’ (Hawkins Reference Hawkins, Devereux, Dillane and Power2011, p. 311). Like Morrissey's, Beck's hyperbolic tropes derive from a relative attitude towards pitch – that is, they potentially evoke a sense of empathy by not singing in ‘correct pitch’. However, the effect is slightly different: Morrissey would often approach high notes and not always reach the top notes correctly, which could be read as a marker of his sheer effort to express himself (see Hawkins Reference Hawkins2002, p. 84f). In ‘Sexx Laws’, Beck concludes the choruses with a hyperbolic ornamentation of the word ‘cry’. Writing these endings down in notes has proved impossible owing to his attitude towards pitch. At the same time, he has dubbedFootnote ¹⁷ the passage several times, as though he wants to underline that what is actually impossible to write down is actually constructed to be exactly like this.

The musical backdrop supports the timbral markers that characterise Beck's voice(s) and the lyrics’ description of a ‘soft male’. The track is built on a steady up-tempo groove of about 134 beats per minute around a drumbeat (consisting of both a live drum kit and a loop) and horn section motif that evoke the Stax sound of the 1960s.Footnote ¹⁸ Justin Meldal Johnson's electric bass guitar adds an overall sense of liveliness to the song, and the offbeats on the snare drum are reinforced by the electric guitar. In the choruses, the groove is supported by handclaps and tambourine, and a piano takes the lead role in supplying the harmonic content. As Beck announces that he is not afraid to cry, the electric guitar replies with a motif of sixths, a musical code often associated with country music.

The nod to country music could sound jarring in the context of both the other Stax-related sonic markers and the sensitive lyrics of the chorus. Although many musicians do not listen to lyrics (Walser Reference Walser1993, p. 26ff), even in their own songs, many listeners do, and the pop producer must always know what is being said while the music is being played. If the lyrics and music do not correspond, unintended meanings can surface in the gap between them. In this way, the markers of country music act as a reminder to us: Beck's concluding line – ‘I'm a full grown man, but I'm not afraid to cry’ – must be heard in a historical context rather than a literal one. Such a statement would perhaps have been a bold assertion in the United States in the 1950s or 1960s. In the 1970s, it would most likely have been taken as a symbol of political correctness. However, in the late 1990s, set against Beck's frivolous play with all sorts of sonic markers and vocalised in a dubbed falsetto voice that borders on hysteria, it gains a decidedly ironic dimension.

The instrumental bridge following the second chorus, and the repeat of the horn section theme from the intro, allow the song to ‘breathe’ for a moment before the final choruses. In this part of the song, an arpeggiated synthesiser melody begins a call-and-response pattern with a pedal-steel guitar, all the while accompanied by bluegrass-like banjo fingerpicking. This is a genre-bending moment indeed, one in which the arpeggio could be heard to provide a pop aesthetic counterpoint to the traditional country markers of banjo, pedal-steel guitar and electric guitar. Alone, these elements represent rather disparate genres of popular music; juxtaposed, they represent a musical irony that is entirely in keeping with the song's lyrics and vocal performance. Harking back to the early 1980s, the nasal timbre of the analogue synthesiser also marks Beck's retronormative method of composition. This bridge therefore incorporates diverse yet purposeful performances on distinctive instruments that appear all the more ironic for their careful presentation. As opposed to the low-fi, sample-saturated aesthetic of Beck's early albums, ‘Sexx Laws’ appears to indicate that Beck means business when he employs sonic markers – that, in effect, those markers are his music, rather than simply ornamentation upon it. It is exactly such an explicit statement of faith that makes Beck at once earnest and ironic, and that provides him with his very recognisable musical identity.

Concluding remarks

Throughout this essay, I have argued that retronormativity builds on the tactics of appropriation and re-contextualisation of musical materials, implying that sonic markers are never merely copied but rather constructed by being incorporated into a new musical language. Beck's use of sonic markers lends an inherent ironic distance to his music and his image, situating him between or among the ideologies that each marker evokes (and the overall ideology that the use of markers as a whole implies). Through his work with different producers, Beck situates himself as an orchestrator of multiple musical voices positioned within a sample-based retro aesthetics. His music, then, provides us with the opportunity to engage with the expressive dimensions of musical codes that are constructed as sonic markers through the musical narratives. As Beck stated in an interview with Pitchfork: ‘Eventually, if you're experimenting with a sound that's unfamiliar, it gets absorbed, and somebody comes and does it better, and it becomes part of a vocabulary’ (Beck, quoted in Dombal Reference Dombal2011).Footnote ¹⁹

For Beck, then, the employment of musical sounds and styles, coded within a given era, implies their appropriation, in terms of the song that contains them and the artist who writes and performs it. Both song and artist thus profit from the cultural references already harnessed in those sonic markers. Moreover, they profit from the new meanings those markers acquire in the context of the given song. Beck's many allusions announce him as eclectic, ironic and hip, but they also make very good (and multivalent) music. With the help of the Dust Brothers and Nigel Godrich, Beck has perfected the integration of retronormative musical gestures into entirely new contexts and buttressed his own reputation along the way. My concept of sonic markers, then, introduces the added aspect of the historical canonisation of some of these gestures. Retronormatively, Beck constructs sonic markers by harvesting musical material from bygone eras of Western popular music, temporarily placing the past in the present. In the end, it is this act that constructs Beck as ‘Beck’.