Midnite Vultures
| Midnite Vultures | ||||
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| Studio album by Beck | ||||
| Released | November 23, 1999 | |||
| Recorded | July 1998 – June 1999 at Soft Studios | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock, funk rock, R&B | |||
| Length | 58:24 | |||
| Label | DGC | |||
| Producer | ||||
| Beck chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Midnite Vultures | ||||
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| Music sample | ||||
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"Get Real Paid" by Beck
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 83/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Alternative Press | 5/5 |
| Chicago Sun-Times | |
| Entertainment Weekly | A− |
| Los Angeles Times | |
| NME | 8/10 |
| Pitchfork Media | 8.5/10 |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Select | 5/5 |
Midnite Vultures is the fourth official studio album and seventh overall by American alternative rock artist Beck, released in November 1999 by DGC Records. While similar to most of Beck's previous albums in its exploration of widely varying musical styles, Midnite Vultures didn't achieve the same blockbuster success as his breakthrough, Odelay, though it was still critically and commercially well received.
Working titles for the album included Zatyricon (the name of a song released in 2000 as a B-side on the "Nicotine & Gravy" single and later included on the Beck EP) and I Can Smell the V.D. in the Club Tonight (a line from "Milk & Honey").
Several songs were directly inspired by other songs: "Get Real Paid" features a spiraling sequencer motif reminiscent of Kraftwerk's "Home Computer"; a synth breakdown in "Milk & Honey" echoes a similar riff in Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message"; "Beautiful Way" came about after listening to The Velvet Underground's "Countess from Hong Kong"; and "Debra" was inspired by both Prince's hit "Raspberry Beret" and the David Bowie song "Win."
Midnite Vultures reached #34 in the US, where it went gold, and also hit #19 in the UK. As of July 2008, Midnite Vultures has sold 743,000 copies in the United States.
The first 500,000 copies came in a digipak.
Midnite Vultures was praised by most critics, and the album holds a score of 83 at Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, indicating "universal acclaim".Jon Pareles of Rolling Stone remarked that on Midnite Vultures, Beck "plays the insider, riding the executive plane through the good life with every need fulfilled." Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that he gives the album "a cinematic richness, depth and detail with an array of mutations and surprises, from banjo hoedown to electronic effects". The NME felt that the album, while narrower in scope than Odelay, is "more immediate in impact".
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Wikipedia