Music Appreciation
Released as the lead single from Midnite Vultures on October 19, 1999, “Sexx Laws” announced Beck’s return to the playful genre-mixing that had defined Odelay, only this time with considerably more funk, sexuality and absurdity.
Written by Beck Hansen, the song grew out of an improvised line he shouted during an encore on the Odelay tour about wanting to “defy the logic of all sex laws.” That idea became a song about rejecting rules and expectations surrounding attraction, sexuality and human behavior.
The lyrics are deliberately surreal rather than a straightforward statement about sexual liberation, fitting Midnite Vultures’ exaggerated portrait of late-1990s excess. Beck himself described the album as an attempt to make a party record filled with deliberately silly sounds, songs and lyrics.
Musically, “Sexx Laws” is almost gleefully overcrowded: retro soul and funk horns collide with electronic rhythms, keyboards, banjo and pedal steel guitar, while Beck moves between singing, shouting and his familiar deadpan delivery.
“Sexx Laws” received considerable alternative-rock airplay and reached No. 21 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart, now known as Alternative Airplay. It also reached No. 27 on the UK Singles Chart. While not one of Beck’s biggest American pop hits, it became one of the defining songs of the Midnite Vultures period and a good example of why the album initially left some listeners wondering whether Beck was sincerely embracing funk and R&B or creating an elaborate parody of them.
Pitchfork later described the record as a hedonistic mixture of sounds influenced by Stax soul, Prince and contemporary hip-hop, with “Sexx Laws” itself characterized as a colorful fusion of retro soul, drum-and-bass rhythms and showy horns. The answer to whether Beck was joking or being serious is probably both: beneath the absurd lyrics and musical excess is a remarkably well-constructed funk-rock song.
The music video, directed by Beck himself, takes that absurdity much further. It contains visual references to William Klein’s satirical 1969 film Mr. Freedom, Pierre Koralnik’s Anna and the feature-film adaptation of the Japanese television series Ganbare!! Robocon.
It opens around the wonderfully named Vision Warrior Men’s Circle, whose members include Jack Black, writer Neil Strauss and Beck bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen. From there, conventional logic quickly disappears: football players invade the gathering, Meldal-Johnsen turns up as Kenny G, kitchen appliances become amorous, and robots, ninjas and other bizarre characters populate Beck’s surreal world.
Sources:
Wikipedia
https://www.beck.com/video/sexx-laws-version-2
https://pitchfork.com/video/watch/pitchfork-docs-beck-s-midnite-vultures-in-4-minutes-liner-notes
https://stereogum.com/7642/video_hangover_beck_sexx_laws/columns/video-hangover
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8212388
https://mubi.com/en/us/films/beck-sexx-laws-mv
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