“Girl” by Beck

"Girl" was the second single from Beck's 2005 album Guero, released that July, and it opens like a video game booting up: 13 seconds of a tinny chiptune melody before the acoustic guitars and drums come tumbling in. Beck produced it with the Dust Brothers and shares the writing credit with John King and Mike Simpson.

Beck sings lead and handles a good chunk of the playing himself, and the result is sunny, springy pop with a little dust on its shoes: a breezy strum, a rolling beat, handclaps, and hooks that pile up faster than you can count them. It sounds like a summer afternoon with the windows down, which is exactly when it arrived.

It reached number 8 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart, and it has stayed a staple of alternative radio's countdowns for two decades since.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.