Devil's Haircut Lyrics

"Devil's Haircut" is a single by Beck, taken from the album Odelay. As is common with his Odelay-era songs, Devils Haircut is driven by a number of samples: the drums in the choruses and drum breaks come from Pretty Purdie's Soul Drums; the drumbeat during the verses comes from Them's cover of James Brown's Out of Sight; and the guitar riff was taken from another Them cover (this time of I Can Only Give You Everything from Them Again,) but it was replayed by Beck, rather than sampled. On top of this smörgåsbord of instrumental borrowings, Beck sings about 'stealing kisses from the leprous faces,' 'discount orgies,' and 'garbage man trees.' The song was written having just finished his grueling Lollapalooza tour; consequently, Devils Haircut is dotted with references to the wandering disorientation that comes with touring, such as 'coming to town with the briefcase blues.' The song's lyrics are full of poetry and mental shortcuts. The lyrics here emulate minimalistic phrases as may be used when not communicating outside of the inner mind. As such, the words are representative of a metaphorical concept of something observed in the world. Beck himself has talked about the meaning of Devils Haircut on a few occasions. In one interview, he claimed that Devils Haircut was 'a really simplistic metaphor for the evil of vanity.' He said of the song: “ I don't know if I ever HAD any youthful purity, but I can understand that you might be tempted to make commercial shit and compromise to do it. I try not to compromise on anything. I think we associate becoming an adult with compromise. Maybe that's what the devil is. In 'Devils Haircut' that was the scenario. I imagined Stagger Lee... I thought, what if this guy showed up now in 1996... I thought of using him as a Rumpelstiltskin figure, this Lazarus figure to comment on where we've ended up as people. What would he make of materialism and greed and ideals of beauty and perfection? His reaction would be, 'Whoa, this is disturbing shit. The music video for this song is directed by Mark Romanek. It features Beck walking through various New York City locations, wearing cowboy attire and carrying a boombox. At some points, the action freezes and the camera zooms in on Beck in tableau. Later the camera zooms in on spies that have been following Beck the whole time. The singer won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video. The video was meant to reference the films Midnight Cowboy and The 400 Blows.