Midnite Vultures

Recording

Working titles for the album included Zatyricon (the name of a song released in 2000 as a B-side on the "Nicotine & Gravy" single and later included on the Beck EP) and I Can Smell the V.D. in the Club Tonight (a line from "Milk & Honey").

Influences

Several songs were directly inspired by other songs: "Get Real Paid" features a spiraling sequencer motif reminiscent of Kraftwerk's "Home Computer"; a synth breakdown in "Milk & Honey" echoes a similar riff in Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message"; "Beautiful Way" came about after listening to The Velvet Underground's "Countess from Hong Kong"; and "Debra" was inspired by both Prince's hit "Raspberry Beret" and the David Bowie song "Win."

Release

Midnite Vultures reached #34 in the US, where it went gold, and also hit #19 in the UK. As of July 2008, Midnite Vultures has sold 743,000 copies in the United States.

The first 500,000 copies came in a digipak.

Critical reception

Midnite Vultures was praised by most critics, and the album holds a score of 83 at Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Jon Pareles of Rolling Stone remarked that on Midnite Vultures, Beck "plays the insider, riding the executive plane through the good life with every need fulfilled." Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that he gives the album "a cinematic richness, depth and detail with an array of mutations and surprises, from banjo hoedown to electronic effects". The NME felt that the album, while narrower in scope than Odelay, is "more immediate in impact".

Q praised Midnite Vultures as an often "musically dazzling" album, while noting that "the one criticism that can be still levelled at Beck is that his songs remain strangely soulless, failing to ever really grip the emotions or stir the soul." In a mixed review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic states that while the album's initial songs are "tight, catchy, and memorable, the production dense", the "awkward, misguided shift in tone" of "Hollywood Freaks" gives the rest of the album the impression that "for all the ingenuity, it's just a hipster joke." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice felt that "his problem isn't that he tries to be funny, but that his jokes are as forced as his horn charts", later giving it a one-star honorable mention rating and remarking that it "does eventually get funky, if anybody cares but me."

Midnite Vultures was nominated in 2001 for Album of the Year at the 43rd Grammy Awards.

In 2006, Midnite Vultures was named the 50th "Worst Album Ever" by Q, despite the fact that they gave the album four stars. Conversely, in 2013, NME ranked the album at number 307 in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Track listing

All tracks written by Beck Hansen, except where noted.

Additional recordings

The following songs were recorded during the Midnite Vultures sessions but did not make the album. Some appear on the limited edition EP Beck as well as other singles from the album.