Beck thought he was going to end up making songs like Snoop Dogg’s ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ when he entered the studio with Pharrell Williams.
The ‘Loser’ hitmaker co-produced much of his upcoming album, ‘Hyperspace’, with the N.E.R.D. star and revealed they both had different ideas at the start of what direction to head in for Beck’s follow-up to 2017’s ‘Colors’.
Pharrell, who produced and featured on 2004’s ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’, advised Beck that he "felt very strongly" that they should work on "singer-songwriter" stuff and not hip-hop.
In an interview with NME, he said: "I was not expecting the songs to come out how they did.
"I was going in thinking of songs like ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’, y’know?
"He felt very strongly that spending a little time with me, that ‘You need to be doing singer-songwriter type of songs’. So that was more of the direction we went in."
The star-studded record features collaborations with the likes of Coldplay’s Chris Martin (‘Stratosphere’), Sky Ferreira (‘Die Waiting’) and producers Paul Epworth and Greg Kurstin, the latter whom co-wrote and produced ‘Dreams’, the first single from ‘Colors’.
Beck, who has shared new single ‘Uneventful Days’ today (17.10.19), had only planned on doing a "single or EP", but he and Pharrell were "surprised" by just how much work they had and didn’t want to waste the tracks, so he it turned into a full-length release.
Beck added: "I had a few things after the ‘Colors’ tour finished and I really wanted to seize the moment with this project.
"There’d been a period of time where Pharrell had been really busy and an opportunity opened up so I went with it.
"Originally it was going to be a single or an EP, but I think we were both surprised when there was a body of work here."
‘Happy’ hitmaker Pharrell also brought "minimalist" production to the record, a first for the Grammy-winner.
Beck explained: "I really tried to be less ambitious on the production on these songs, like to let them be simple and let them breathe. Pharrell is a master minimalist.
"On production I’m a bit of a maximalist – I’m known to have 140 tracks of things trying to coexist and fight to be heard at the same time. I’ve really tried to reform myself to let it be more simple."
‘Hyperspace’ is released on November 22.
The track-listing for the album is:
1. ‘Hyperlife’
2. ‘Uneventful Days’
3. ‘Saw Lightning’
4. ‘Die Waiting’
5. ‘Chemical’
6. ‘See Through’
7. ‘Hyperspace’
8. ‘Stratosphere’
9. ‘Dark Places’
10. ‘Star’
11. ‘Everlasting Nothing’