And your sister

Beck - 'Debra' (Midnite Vultures - 1999)

How do you close out not just a year, but a decade, a century and even a millennium? Until 1999 it wasn’t a problem that bothered anyone as the people in the year 999 were probably more concerned with regnal years if they cared at all.

Decades tend not to play ball with something as clear-cut as years ending in 9. There are many suggestions as to when the 1960s finished, from the legal break up of The Beatles or the death of Jimi Hendrix in 1970 to an unspecified period in the early 1970s as the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, the sexual revolution, and the counterculture, began to lose momentum and shift in new directions. Many people look at the long nineties as a period between the Berlin Wall coming down and The Twin Towers in New York doing likewise - at least the 2020s had the decency to start bang on time. Centuries is an even bigger issue, you could argue that the deaths of Mikhail Gorbachev and Queen Elizabeth II in Aug and Sept 2022 went some way to closing the book on the 20th Century, but all of this is somewhat subjective and open to interpretation.

None of this mattered in late 1999, though; for those who find the end-of-year lists for music, movies, tv shows, books and anything else a bit much when they start each November, you would have enjoyed the whole year which was debating the great and the good of 20th Century culture on a seemingly daily basis from about September onwards.

This was also a strange time to wake up to expand your cultural circle. It meant that I, as a 16-year-old, was simultaneously trying to understand the music, TV and cinema of 1999, the 1990s and the 20th Century. Without the internet, by and large. It was a big task but also an exciting one.

It was into this arena that Beck Hansen stepped. There were enough decent reviews of Midnite Vultures as well as the great lead single and the presence of Johnny Marr, to persuade me to buy a copy from HMV in Bluewater with vouchers from my birthday, and though I didn’t know it at the time, I held in my hand the last good album of the 20th Century

¹

.

Beck had attempted to record the closing track ‘Debra’ with The Dust Brothers for Odelay, but was potentially unhappy with the recording, felt it didn’t fit on the album or both. The song debuted live in 1995 and was played throughout 1996, and it started to become a song that was a natural fit for live shows. It still sits in Beck’s all-time top 10 songs played live.

Beck has said;

I thought it was too jokey. What happened is we started playing it live and it became the centerpiece of the whole set. It was the song that people would react to more than the songs that they’d heard on the radio. So we kept playing it and playing it. I think its life began as being tongue-in-cheek and silly, but somewhere along the way, like the way we performed it every night, it acquired some other dimensions.

The comparison between the album version of ‘Debra’ and the live versions of the song is a common sentiment among fans, who often find the recorded version to be a letdown compared to the energetic and spontaneous live performances. Ultimately, capturing all the variations and nuances in the various live versions into one definitive studio version would always be challenging.

Some people view the song as a pastiche or send-up of a particular type of R&B song, but there is also a sense that this is part tribute and not all tongue-in-cheek. Musically, we have the loose bass riff from Ramsey Lewis’s 1973 song ‘My Love For You’ played on upright bass by Justin Meldal-Johnsen. Beck himself has mentioned R. Kelly’s ‘I Like The Crotch On You’

²

as an influence, and you don't have to be a David Bowie nerd to pick out the refrain from Young Americans' 'Win' come floating in at the start. Finally, the “ooh lovely lady, girl, you drive me crazy coda is from Kool Keith’s ‘Lovely Lady’. I can also get a sense of Prince’s ‘Adore’ from it.

Smash up my ride-- Well maybe not the ride

Beck’s view on this style is one of wonder;

It’s fascinating to me, these guys singing R&B with a very sweet, smooth groove, but they’re singing about how they want to get some girl’s panties off and do them real good. Very explicit, but very sensitive at the same time. It’s a really weird juxtaposition.

Even though Beck felt the song wasn’t right for Odelay, you can hear all the magpie-esque tendencies that worked so well for that album being deployed. What differs is Beck using his self-declared “seventeen-octave vocal range” on it and those lyrics.

We are treated to the tale of Jenny, who spends her days dealing with suburban soccer moms and their coupons at JCPenney. I am still not convinced that Beck and his fresh gum, his Hyundai and his need not to treat women like Zankou Chicken is enough to date him. While Beck is enough of a salty sea dog to spy Jenny’s name tag to glean her name, things still move up a notch when he sees her sister, Debra. At this point, we get to a brilliant, funny juxtaposition in the lyrics that never fails to make me smile when I hear it.

I wanna get with you only you, girl

And your sister - I think her name is Debra, oh!

Only you. and your sister.

Before we get to the hidden track, a piece of crazy untitled instrumental music that sounds like fax machines

³

having an orgy and then a cigarette afterwards before another session, we cycle back to the start. Beck implores us, as he did on 'Sexx Laws' the album's opening track, that he's a "full grown man, and I’m not afraid to cry”

And that’s it; that’s how the 20th Century ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

1. The soundtrack to Magnolia came out a few weeks later, but that isn’t a studio album, so I am not counting it.

2. I’m not going to link to this for pretty obvious reasons.

3. How very 20th Century.