Beck Is the Loneliest Number  The inscrutable music, the
unknowable man  Beck Hansen is not white like Elvis Presley. He
isn't white like Bob Dylan. He isn't white like the Beastie Boys
or white like the Backstreet Boys. He isn't white like Kid Rock
or like Eminem or like Limp Bizkit. He isn't even white like
Michael Jackson.  No, in Beck you behold Melville's whiteness of
the whale, a whiteness that not only is a reflection of all that
it beholds, but also reflects everything in the eye beholding
it. Beck is the absence of all colors posing as the presence of
all colors, and vice versa. He's commercially popular for all
the right reasons (good songs) and critically overrated for all
the wrong ones (relevance). Like Popeye and Yahweh, he am what
he am: a prime little number, divisible only by himself.  It
isn't Beck's artistry that's overrated, though: That's why he's
such an elusive target for those few critical whalers willing to
harpoon him. From the very good Mellow Gold to the very
excellent Odelay to th