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.[2] Since its release,the album has appeared in numerous publications' lists of the greatest of the 1990s and of all time.
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.[3]
The sessions for what would become Odelay originally began as a subdued,acoustic 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."[4] He would eventually abandon work with Rothrock and Schnapf,opting to work with the Dust Brothers instead. Most of the album was recorded in 1995 at the Dust Brothers' home recording studio in Silver Lake,Los Angeles.[3] The Dust Brothers' production style was hip-hop-focused but layered;their résuméincluded work with Beastie Boys,Tone Lōc and Young MC. Their small recording room was filled with records,many of which provided samples for the album.[3]
Title and artwork
The title is a phonetic English rendering of the Mexicanslang interjection "órale",which translates roughly to "cool" or "ok"[citation needed]. 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.[5] The album's cover is a photo of a Komondor,a rare Hungarian 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.[6]
Tour
The promotional tour for the album began in May–June 1996,appearing in several record stores and radio stations in the U.S. 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,[7] after over 150 shows from July '96 until September '97.[8]
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.[12] 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.[13]
In 1998,Q magazine readers voted Odelay the 51st greatest album of all time.[citation needed] It was voted as one of the top 10 pop albums of the 1990s by the music writers of The Associated Press.[29] It was ranked No. 16 in Spin's "100 Greatest Albums,1985–2005".[30] The music website Pitchfork ranked it at No. 19 on their top 100 albums of the 1990s in 2003[31] and No. 93 in their updated Top 150 list in 2022.[32]Rolling Stone ranked the album No. 306 in their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2009,[33] and later ranked it No. 424 in the 2023 edition,[34] as well as No. 9 on its 2019 list of the 100 best albums of the '90s.[35] Voters in Channel 4's 2005 "100 Greatest Albums" poll placed it at No. 73.[36]
↑ Dimery, Robert; Lydon, Michael (March 23, 2010). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: Revised and Updated Edition. Universe. ISBN978-0-7893-2074-2.
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