Deluxe versions of The Information included a DVD containing music videos for every song on the CD.
"Diamond Bollocks" is a bonus track on Mutations (hidden on the US release but separate on others) because Beck couldn't find a way to fit it in the tracklisting. He described it as "the wayward son at the Thanksgiving dinner who just doesn't really fit in with the family anymore, is the black sheep. So you put him at the end of the table..." Other versions of Mutations also include bonus material - UK, German and Japanese versions add "Runners Dial Zero", German Limited Edition has "Halo Of Gold" and "Black Balloon" in addition to the usual German tracks, Japanese version has the re-recorded version of "Electric Music And The Summer People" inserted in the main tracklisting.
"Satan Gave Me a Taco" is one of his more popular early songs. When fans request him to play it live at concerts, he more often than not refuses to play and says he considers it some silly song he wrote in a few minutes that he only expected to perform once and was genuinely surprised at how many people like it.
He's also been this way with "Loser" and "Debra", feeling they were stupid songs, but continues to play them because his audiences love them (especially "Loser")
Averted on Odelay—Many of Beck's friends, and later his grandfather had died recently and he had recorded some predictably depressing material with Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf, but shelved it. Instead, he did some upbeat stuff with the Dust Brothers and Caldato. A B-Side that dates from this shelved material, "Brother", is said to be Beck's saddest song. It predates Sea Change by a number of years.
In full force on Sea Change, which was inspired by his breakup with his girlfriend.
Executive Meddling: A positive example - Beck had made "Loser" effectively as a joke and had no intention to release it. His label had other ideas, and it ended up making Beck a household name.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Beck's work that he made prior to Mellow Gold is out of print and is circulated by the fans. This includes two albums (Golden Feelings, Stereopathetic Soulmanure), two non-album singles ("Steve Threw Up", "MTV Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack"), and seven independently released demo tapes. In 2023, Stereopathetic Soulmanure finally saw official release on digital storefronts and streaming platforms, albeit without an accompanying re-release on physical media.
On-Set Injury: Beck suffered a serious spinal injury while filming the video for "E-Pro" in 2005. After-effects of the injury lingered for years - his mobility was limited while touring behind Modern Guilt three years later - and he considered retiring from touring. He didn't return to full-scale touring until 2013.
Similarly Named Works: Narrowly avoided - "Broken Train", from his 1999 album Midnite Vultures, had the Working Title of "Out Of Kontrol", but he made a different part of the refrain become the Title Drop because The Chemical Brothers had released a single called "Out Of Control" the same year. The change came late enough that early promo copies of Midnite Vultures still listed it as "Out Of Kontrol".
Shrug of God: Not even Beck can confirm what the actual lyric in the chorus of "Girl" is. The official lyrics simply read "Hey, my... girl" (see Indecipherable Lyrics).
Why "Loser" exists. Beck was tooling around in the studio, tried to freestyle, and when it hit him that he couldn't rap, he muttered, "Soy un perdedor" ("I'm a loser"). Also true of the sitar in the song, which also appears on "Steal My Body Home" recorded the same day. The sitar happened to be in Carl Stephenson's studio, and Beck who had not played one, decided nevertheless to improvise on it.
Similarly, "Wow" was a spontaneous studio experiment based around freestyling - he had no intention of releasing it until his kids overheard it and loved it.
Beck collaborated with William Orbit on a song called "Feel Good Time", which was going to appear on an Orbit solo album. Somehow the unreleased recording got into the hands of someone involved with licensing music for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, who wanted to use the song in the film. Beck turned down the offer. In the meantime P!nk, who was slated to record a different song with William Orbit for the soundtrack, also heard "Feel Good Time" and decided she wanted to sing it herself. With Beck's approval, his vocals and guitar were removed from the mix, P!nk's vocals were added, and her version of the song became a hit. The version with Beck's vocals was never officially released, but can be found online because William Orbit himself eventually leaked it.
He wanted Chance The Rapper to appear on the song "Wow", but things didn't work out for whatever reason - A version was recorded with Lil' Yachty, but it has yet to be released.
Midnite Vultures had enough outtakes that he considered following it up with a second album culled from the same sessions. He ultimately decided not to, perhaps because Midnite Vultures itself wasn't quite as well-received as previous albums. However, most of the known outtakes were used as BSides, and two songs ("Earthquake Weather" and "Rental Car") were reworked for Guero six years later.
Beck recorded a follow up to "One Foot In The Grave" known to fans as "K Records 2". Its release was cancelled in favour of work on Odelay. With the "One Foot" reissue in 2008, Beck rediscovered "K Records 2" in his vaults and released "The Way It Seems" from it as a download. However, he decided not to release the album after all, feeling it wasn't profitable enough. Several of the songs from the album either were played as radio sessions or rerecorded for Mutations (which was originally intended as the indie label low-key sister LP to "Odelay").
Beck was going to release a punk album with Thurston Moore in 1994/1995, which would have included such tracks as "Minus", "Scavenger", "Glut", "Untitled", "Color Coordinated", "Megaboob" and plausibly "Lemonade" and the rerecorded "Thunderpeel". Ultimately it did not happen, due to the focus on Odelay, with "Minus" kept for that album largely cause the group still enjoyed playing it live.
In 2013 Beck released 3 singles on his YouTube channel. Gimme, a mixture of bass guitar, distorted lyrics, multiple layers of pitch-shifted autotuned voices saying 'kill me' amongst heavy steel drums, Defreinded, which was practically indescribable in both tone and genre, and I Won't be Long, an insightful mix of electronica and country. The three songs were critically acclaimed for their Lo-fi, almost unmusical nature, and were announced to be part of one of two upcoming Beck albums, an ambitious and experimental follow-up to Modern Guilt, called Rococo, which would be released alongside a humble folk album. Only the folk album, now known as Morning Phase released after Beck moved to Capitol in 2014, and there's been no word on Rococo since. It might be because of rights issues, the songs were released on Parlophone, and the album most likely recorded whilst he was there. However, as he moved to Capitol before the album was set to release, there becomes a problem with the ownership: Parlophone owns Rococo, Capirol owns Beck, and that means that neither party can release the album.
He wrote 32 songs for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, 5 were used in the movie and are on it's soundtrack album, 4 of these and one other that wasn't used were recorded by fictional band Sex-Bob-Omb.
One song planned for a follow-up to Midnite Vultures was meant to sample Labi Siffre’s “I Got The…”, but got scrapped when it got sampled for "My Name Is"
