Beck regrets not giving Weird Al Yankovic permission to parody ‘Loser’ in the ’90s

nme.com:

Beck has said that he regrets rejecting Weird Al Yankovic’s request to parody ‘Loser’.Yankovic had asked to cover Beck’s hit in the mid-’90s but he turned him down, fearing that he was already not being taken seriously as an artist.At the time of Beck’s breakout success with ‘Loser’, he was facing what he today remembers as a barrage of negative press.Beck said in a preview of his upcoming Audible Original premiered by Billboard that he was worried the move would vindicate industry bosses and journalists who regarded his songs as “hodgepodge ideas” that weren’t “real songs”.“‘Weird Al’ Yankovic tried to do a parody of it.

It was going to be called ‘Schmoozer’,” Beck recalled in the preview. “I regret denying him permission to do it. I think it would have been an amazing video.

I’m actually really sad it didn’t happen.“I had a lot of people who were veterans in the business telling me at 20, 21, 22, ‘You should go back to school.

You don’t really have the talent to do this. The songs, as they are, aren’t going to work. They’re too rough. They’re too raw.