Beck Reveals Secrets of 'Guero' to 'Nightline'

May 13, 2005 — -- It's been more than a decade since Beck's lo-fi hit, "Loser," rode a hip-hop beat to the top of the charts and became a slacker anthem. It could have turned him into a one-hit wonder.

Instead, over a course of seven albums -- and a non-stop chorus of acclaim -- Beck has grown into one of the most compelling figures in rock music, with a freewheeling talent for mixing rock, hip-hop, traditional music and strange sounds that usually come out of video games into fantastic collages of sound.

Beck is now 34, married and a new father. On "Guero," his first album in three years, Beck returns to the eclectic style of his earlier work, but with lyrics that are more direct and personal.

"It's a little more complicated," Beck tells "Nightline," describing the perspective that comes with parenthood. "You have a lot more luggage … A lot more luggage."

"Nightline" enlisted the help of independent rock pioneer John Flansburgh -- a member of They Might Be Giants -- for an in-depth interview with Beck, exploring his evolution as an artist and the motivations behind "Guero."

Beck's new album was nine months in the making, and the project reunites him with the Dust Brothers -- John King and Mike Simpson -- the duo who helped him establish his signature sound on the 1996 Grammy Award-winning album "Odelay."

"Guero" combines the emotional directness of "Sea Change," his last album, and the catchy beats of his earlier recordings. The album's title -- Spanish slang for "White Boy" -- takes the artist back to his childhood as a white kid in East Los Angeles.

"It's something that I'd hear growing up. Something I'd hear on the street, walking to school or something, I'd get called a 'Guero'," Beck tells Flansburgh.

"It's just a word that stuck in my head and I wanted to do something with that at some point ... I ended up, in the end, just kind of doing this almost journalistic kind of look at that whole time."