by Camden Andrews

Editor's Note: This is the first in a recurring series we're featuring on the blog, wherein unimaginably young NPR Music intern Camden Andrews — okay, he is a grown adult — reviews albums we can't believe he's never heard. To be fair, when U2 released The Joshua Tree, Camden hadn't even been born yet.

Until last week, I'd never heard Beck's Odelay. Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton's jaws dropped when I told them this. I was 7 when it came out. Back then, my favorite song was "On Top of Spaghetti" off a Little Richard kids' CD my mom used to play in the car.

Robin gave me a copy and I gave it a listen. My brains didn't exactly "blow out the back of my head" the way Mike Katzif (NPR staffer and former All Songs Considered intern) predicted. Maybe I'm jaded, but I think I'm pretty lucky these days to hear artists like Girl Talk mash up the most absurd combinations of songs and make them sound great. Animal Collective can make me second-guess the brownie I just ate after getting lost in one of their psychedelic freak jams. Experimental pop is really good these days. Beck's head-scratching blend of hip-hop, swampy Delta blues, psychedelia, funk and rock may have been groundbreaking 13 years ago, but it just wasn't that shocking for me. Still, even a musically jaded 20-year-old can't help but be impressed by Beck's ability to mix seemingly unrelated musical ideas and create a sound that's just the right amount of weird.

"Where It's At" from Odelay:

After a few listens, though, I realized that there's something special about this CD beyond the music that made me like it more each time, and that's Beck's persona. It takes a certain ethos to pull off songs like "Where It's At" and "High Five" without coming off as ridiculous or trying too hard, and he fully owns it. There's a balance of clever irony that isn't too hokey, and his too-cool slacker-king attitude is infectious; I noticed a little swagger in my step walking with "Hotwax" in my headphones. Technology will probably keep opening up new ways for people to experiment with the sound and structure of pop music, but I doubt there will be many, if any, that can pull it off the way Beck did with Odelay. This earned my stamp of approval.