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
MSN Music	B+
NME	8/10
Pitchfork Media	6.9/10
Rolling Stone
Spin

The Information is the seventh studio album and tenth overall by American alternative rock musician Beck, released in October 3, 2006 on Interscope Records. It was produced and mixed by Nigel Godrich, with whom Beck had previously recorded Mutations (1998) and Sea Change (2002). Recording took place from 2003 to 2006, with Beck concurrently working on another album, 2005's Guero, with The Dust Brothers. The album received positive reviews from critics and made several publications' year-end lists.

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 was officially released 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.

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Wikipedia