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Song Stories

“Loser”

Beck | 1993

In 1992, 22-year-old Beck Hansen was scraping by as a video-store clerk while performing “anti-folk” songs at L.A. coffeehouses. During that year, he cut “Loser” in the kitchen of onetime Geto Boys producer Karl Stephenson. The song became the centerpiece of his major-label debut album, 1994's Mellow Gold, which cost $200 to make. But the downside of creating the quintessential slacker anthem is that people assumed Beck was actually a loser himself. "It didn't seem like people understood what I was doing," Beck told Rolling Stone. "It was like, 'Is this guy for real? Is he making music that's worthy or valuable?' I felt like I was constantly having to prove myself."

Find out the connection between Beck’s grandfather and Yoko Ono.
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Song Stories

“Too Close”

Next | 1998

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'" 

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