The Meaning Behind Beck’s Saddest Song, “Lost Cause”

Willie Nelson covered Beck’s “Lost Cause” on his latest album Last Leaf on the Tree.

Nelson, 91, sings about hopelessness; he’s confronting mortality. Singing about mortality in the abstract is one thing, but very few have the perspective of someone who has walked this planet for nearly a century.

Beck was a young man when he wrote “Lost Cause.” Youth can blind one from realizing how lucky they are to be alive. Still, the joy of love often requires the painful cost of loss.

Sea Change followed the ironic funk-disco of Midnite Vultures in 2002. Produced by Nigel Godrich, Sea Change resulted from the bleakness Beck felt following the end of his nine-year relationship with Leigh Limon.

Using minimalist folk, he created a heartbreaking masterpiece.

Go It Alone

Despair is the loss of hope, and if you want to know what that feeling sounds like, look no further than “Lost Cause.” Beck’s saddest song is aching and gorgeous. The singer, famous for “Loser,” writes about a different kind of defeat.

This is the other side of his slacker anthem. Where “Loser” rejoices in a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt, the melancholy of “Lost Cause” leaves Beck alone, staring at the world around him in utter futility.

Your sorry eyes, they cut through bone
Make it hard to leave you alone
Leave you here wearing your wounds
Waving your guns at somebody new

Following a break-up, the narrator wanders around town in a pointless pursuit of connection. With Beck sinking deeper into an emotional abyss, the people around him seem to default to nihilism. Or at least that’s how he sees it.

There’s too many people you used to know
They see you coming, they see you go
They know your secrets, and you know theirs
This town is crazy, but nobody cares

Too Busy To Be Heartbroken

Sea Change arrived two years after Beck discovered Limon, his then-fiancée, was having an affair. The saddest part of “Lost Cause” isn’t its gloom, it’s the resignation. Beck was 32 then, young enough to survive a broken relationship, yet old enough to allow cynicism to triumph.

There’s no one laughing at your back now
No one standing at your door
Is that what you thought love was for?

In the music video, a computer-generated image of Beck slowly falls from the sky. While descending, the singer begins to fragment into tiny pieces, like broken glass. At one point, a tiny, vulnerable hurt bursts from his chest.

His face looks undetermined, stunned, and stilled in grief. A fireworks display accompanies his landing. But this isn’t a celebration. It looks more like the malfunction that happens when every firework on the barge explodes simultaneously.

Mellow Golden Hour

Kasey Musgraves opens her 2018 album Golden Hour with the stunning “Slow Burn.” You can hear echoes of Beck’s Sea Change. However, Musgraves chooses instead to savor life, absorbing the last morsels of heat and light from a setting sun. It’s the difference between living or just letting the world happen around you.

Writers understand the difference between the active and passive voice. (Kacey drove the van home vs. The van was driven home by Kacey.) The first uses fewer words and gives pace to the reader. The second, though it says the same thing, puts Kacey last.

“Low Burn” and “Lost Cause” share some musical DNA, but Musgraves takes control while Beck lets go of the wheel. Her optimism offers a corrective for apathy.

When Beck sings, Baby, you’re lost / Baby, you’re a lost cause, might part of him be addressing himself? Luckily, sea changes don’t always move in the same direction.

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Photo by Wendy Redfern/Redferns