“Lost Cause” by Beck

"Lost Cause" is the fifth track on Sea Change, Beck's fifth major-label album, released on Geffen in 2002, and it's sparse, weary and beautifully slow. Beck wrote it alone and plays acoustic guitar and banjo, with Smokey Hormel on guitars, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. on clavinet and synthesizer, Justin Meldal-Johnsen on double bass and glockenspiel, and Joey Waronker's drums barely brushing the surface. Nigel Godrich produced, engineered and mixed it, and every sound hangs in the air like breath on a cold window.

It went out only as a promo single in the UK, Germany and Japan, and reached number 36 on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart in March 2003. Garth Jennings directed two videos: one built entirely in Photoshop around an effigy of Beck tumbling out of the sky, the other a band performance jolted by speed-ups, slow-downs and stop motion.

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