The Information

This article is about the Beck album. For the Martin Amis novel, see The Information (novel). For other meanings, see Information (disambiguation).

The Information
Studio album by Beck
Released	October 3, 2006
Recorded	Winter 2003 – Spring 2006
Genre	Alternative rock, alternative hip hop, rap rock
Length	61:33
Label	Interscope
Producer	Nigel Godrich
Beck chronology
Guerolito (2005) The Information (2006) Modern Guilt (2008)

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	(73/100)
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
The A.V. Club	A−
Entertainment Weekly	A−
The Guardian
The Independent
IGN	(9/10)
NME	(8/10)
Pitchfork Media	(6.9/10) (7.4/10) (Deluxe version)
Robert Christgau	B+
Rolling Stone
Slant Magazine
The Times

The Information is the tenth (and seventh major-label) studio album by American alternative rock musician Beck, released in October 2006 on Interscope Records. It was produced and mixed by longtime Beck collaborator Nigel Godrich. Recording began in 2003 concurrently with Guero, but the album was not completed until 2006. Rolling Stone magazine has named it the 24th best album of 2006, while Spin magazine ranked it number 10 on their 40 Best Albums of 2006.

The album reached #7 on the US's Billboard 200, #6 in Canada and #31 on Australia's ARIA Chart. As of July 2008, The Information has sold 434,000 copies in the United States.

Release history

Before its release, Beck said the album was not a "stripped down" record, in contrast with his previous Godrich collaborations Mutations and Sea Change. According to Beck, "Nigel [Godrich] said he wanted to do a hip-hop record" before they began work on the album. "And in a way it is, and in a way it isn't. It has hip-hop songs, and my previous work with him was Mutations and Sea Change, these sort of introspective records, and so this new one is sort of bringing those two worlds together."

In an interview with the BBC, Beck said the album had been "painful" to make:

It started out painless, and ended up being painful. It's as if we made the album once, and we made it again, and we made it a third time. We started the record in 2003, and we got together annually, the producer [Nigel Godrich] and I. We combed over everything, and got rid of the things we were tired of, the things that seemed trite.

The first single in North America was "Nausea," which officially went to radio on September 5, 2006. The first single in the UK was "Cellphone's Dead", with an official video directed by Michel Gondry. "Think I'm In Love" went to US radio as the second and final single and became a Modern Rock and Triple A radio hit, garnering renewed interest in The Information.

On February 27, 2007, a "deluxe version" of the album was released. It contained the original album plus three songs only available internationally, six remixes, a complete printing of the lyrics, a DVD with all the studio-released videos plus bonus non-studio-released videos of "Nausea" and "Cellphone's Dead", and four different sticker sheets for the album cover.

Music videos

Some copies of the album include a bonus DVD of specially filmed music videos, one for each track on the record. In the Wired interview, Beck explained the making of these videos, which would also appear on video-sharing site YouTube:

We filmed a series of very low-budget, homemade videos for all the songs on the record. We got a bunch of cameras and a $100 video mixer off eBay and shot 15 silly, impromptu videos against a green screen. We even invited our friends and family into the studio to be a part of the action — my mother-in-law did the lighting, and my son and nieces and nephews are running around acting crazy. It was just a complete free-for-all, done on the fly. We're putting all the videos together right now with the idea of having a visual version of the record that we'll put on the Internet. I'm totally curious to see how the videos will add to the experience of listening to the album. Or maybe they'll actually detract from the experience. That would be funny.

Artwork

The album was issued with a blank sleeve and booklet and one of four different sheets of stickers for fans to make their own album art. Beck explained to Wired magazine he wanted no two copies of the CD cover to be the same: "The artwork is going to be customizable. The idea is to provide something that calls for interactivity." However, because the album art concept was seen as a gimmick to bolster retail sales, The Information was deemed ineligible to enter the UK Albums Chart.

Track listing

All songs written by Beck, except tracks 5, 12, 14 and 15, which were co-written with Nigel Godrich.

1. "Elevator Music" – 3:38
2. "Think I'm in Love" – 3:20
3. "Cellphone's Dead" – 4:46
4. "Strange Apparition" – 3:48
5. "Soldier Jane" – 3:59
6. "Nausea" – 2:55
7. "New Round" – 3:26
8. "Dark Star" – 3:45
9. "We Dance Alone" – 3:57
10. "No Complaints" – 3:00
11. "1000 BPM" – 2:32
12. "Motorcade" – 4:15
13. "The Information" – 3:46
14. "Movie Theme" – 3:53
15. "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton" – 10:36
    • The Horrible Fanfare section uses a sample of Cellphone's Dead.
    • The Landslide section uses a sample from the song Requiem pour un con, by the French singer Serge Gainsbourg.
    • The Exoskeleton section contains dialogue spoken by Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze.

Deluxe version

Disc one

1. "Elevator Music" – 3:38
2. "Think I'm in Love" – 3:20
3. "Cellphone's Dead" – 4:46
4. "Strange Apparition" – 3:48
5. "Soldier Jane" – 3:59
6. "Nausea" – 2:54
7. "Dark Star" – 3:45
8. "Movie Theme" – 3:53
9. "We Dance Alone" – 3:57
10. "No Complaints" – 3:00
11. "1000BPM" – 2:30
12. "Motorcade" – 4:15
13. "The Information" – 3:46
14. "New Round" – 3:26
15. "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton" – 10:36
16. "Inside Out" – 3:43
17. "This Girl That I Know" – 2:43
18. "O Menina" – 2:09

Disc two

1. "Cellphone's Dead" (Ellen Allien remix) – 5:37
2. "Nausea" (Bumblebeez remix) – 2:28
3. "Dark Star" (David Andrew Sitek remix) – 4:08
4. "Nausea" (The Chap remix) – 3:55
5. "Cellphone's Dead" (Jamie Lidell Limited Minutes remix) – 4:32
6. "Cellphone's Dead" (Ricardo Villalobos remix) – 14:38

Disc Three

The third disc of the album contains some of Beck's homemade music videos.[1]

Personnel

• Beck – vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, melodica, piano, organ, keyboards, programming, effects, scratching, sitar, bass guitar, harmonica, kalimba, percussion, drums, drum effects, glockenspiel, Game Boy
• Nigel Godrich – production, mixing, keyboards, programming, effects, scratching, tambourine, percussion, background vocals, Speak 'n Spell, whistle, Tote-A-Tune, kalimba, drums, Game Boy
• Jason Falkner – bass guitars, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, African bass, Moog synthesizer bass, background vocals, percussion, drums
• James Gadson – drums, percussion, background vocals
• Joey Waronker – drums, percussion, background vocals
• Smokey Hormel – intro sounds
• Justin Meldal-Johnsen – intro sounds
• Roger Manning Jr. – intro sounds
• Alex Acuña – percussion, background vocals
• Harvey Mason – drums
• Brian LeBarton – Speak 'n Spell
• Justin Stanley – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, background vocals, percussion, flute
• Greg Kurstin – keyboards, berimbau, piano, bass keyboard, synthesizer, background vocals, acoustic guitar
• DJ Z-Trip – scratching
• Stevie Black – cello, percussion, background vocals
• Lucia Ribisi – girl on "Cellphone's Dead"
• Cosimo Hansen – talking
• Sean Davis – bass guitars
• Rachel Shelley – shipping forecast
• David Campbell – string arrangements, conductor
• Suzie Katayama – strings
• Charlie Bisharat – strings
• Spike Jonze – talking on "Exoskeleton"
• Dave Eggers – talking on "Exoskeleton"

Certifications

Country	Certification	Sales/shipments
Canada	Gold	50,000

External links

• The Information at MusicBrainz
• The Information at Metacritic
• Video clips for The Information at YouTube