Beck is gearing up to release his long-awaited, thirteenth studio album, Colors, due out October 13th. In celebration of the fall presentation, which has been in discussion for over a year now, the genre-straddling alt rocker released a new song “Dear Life” paired with a lyric video of psychedelic animation and story-building cinema. The song features whimsical guitar licks and the eerie lyrics Beck music is known and loved for, though this new release certainly confirms a new direction of pop-fueled rock for the singer/songwriter. We’re digging it.
“Dear Life” is the third single released from Colors, following “Wow” and “Dreams,” which both dropped within the last two years. Enjoy all three songs below:
Though Morning Phase won him a Grammy award for Best Album, Beck never intended for the 2014 release to be so successful. In a new 2016 Rolling Stone interview, Beck says that the album was only released “just so we would have something out, because we were going on tour.” The real project in Beck’s mind is the album yet to come.
Colors will see Beck fuse the dreaminess of Morning Phase with the more electronic loops and rhythms of his 90’s works. “It’s a summer night, people have their hands up… It’s a communal, celebratory thing. I wanted to take that into the studio, a kind of energy or joy. The thing that wakes you up a little bit.”
“There’s a substratum to a lot of the songs – songs within other songs, choruses that became bridges… It’s not far from how I made my first couple of records,” says Beck about the process behind the new work. He also recruited Greg Kurstin to help write and produce the album.
All in all, it’s nice to see Beck so enthusiastic about his new album, and we can’t wait for the full release. “It’s kind of life-sparking… I want to have some new things to say. I’m still filling out the picture. We do ‘Where It’s At,’ and you’re like, ‘OK, we needed that.’ Then you do another one. It’s all adding up to a picture.”