"Loser"

Beck
(Bong Load/DGC, 1994)

The song that supposedly did for our time what "Subterranean Homesick Blues" did for Dylan's. I'm not so sure "In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey/Butane in my veins" is the same as "Johnny's in the basement/Mixing up the medicine." But "My time is a piece of wax/Falling on a termite/That's choking on the splinters" might be. This was never supposed to be the slacker anthem it turned out to be -- which just shows that you never can tell how people are going use a song, no matter how well you make it.

-- Jon Garelick