By ‘Dayo Showemimo
At the just concluded 57th Grammy awards that held on Sunday February 8, 2015, one man stood out, perhaps more than all others even if did not win more than one award
But with picking up the Album of the Year award, all of a sudden everyone is asking: ‘Who is Beck?’
Well, for starters, Beck is a previously slept on guy who seemed to have come out of the blues to beat the almighty Beyonce and Sam Smith to win the ‘Album of the year’ category at the 57th edition of the Grammys.
Born in Los Angeles on July 8, 1970, Beck Hansen is an American singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist (he plays the guitar, keyboard, drums, sitar, banjo, vocoder, kalimba and several musical instruments with ease).
Beck fell in love with music from his teenage years and started singing professionally as far back as 1985. Beck rose to prominence for his unique style of creating musical collages of a wide range of styles that encompass folk, funk, soul, hip hop, alternative rock and country music years ago.
In 1994, his smash hit tune, ‘Loser’ was a worldwide hit but being the pre-social media and internet scrutiny days, not many are aware of his name and his face. In February 2014, Beck released his 12th studio album, Morning Phase which changed it all for him as he was named winner of the coveted Album of the Year category at the 57th Grammys.
Two of Beck’s most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change (his 1996 and 2002 albums respectively) both of which were ranked on ‘Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Beck is a four-time platinum artist that has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks.
He is married to actress, Marissa Ribisi and they have two kids together but with his win at the Staples Center on February 8, 2015 and stunt pulled by Kanye, it is most unlikely that life would remain the same for Beck going forward.
