Apparently, there was at least one person in Beck‘s life who didn’t think his album Odelay was “Where It’s At.”
Speaking to Matt Wilkinson on Apple Music’s Essential Albums, the “Loser” artist recalls a “famous producer” telling him he shouldn’t release the future double-platinum record, which celebrates its 25th anniversary today.
“He said, ‘If you release it, it’ll be a huge mistake,'” Beck shares. “‘You should not release this record. You should go back in and make a real album with real songs.'”
Beck says he remembers “being so deflated and I went home very discouraged and scared because I was 24 and I had virtually no money and I had just spent about $300,000 making this record.” He adds, “I thought [I] would be paying it off, working in a minimum wage job for a decade. It was going to be a disaster. The whole thing was going to be a disaster.”
Of course, Odelay was anything but a disaster. The 1996 record earned a Grammy Album of the Year nomination, spawned the singles “Where It’s At,” “Devils Haircut” and “The New Pollution,” and has become Beck’s best-selling album.
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.