The Beck Bummer That Highlighted His Most Devastating Album

It’s always exciting when an artist shows us something we didn’t know they had in them. Beck accomplished that with his 2002 album Sea Change. On the LP, he set aside his goofy hipster routine for an earnest look at the end of a relationship.

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“Guess I’m Doing Fine” serves as one of the standout tracks on the record. It’s a song where you can imagine asking someone how they were, and then getting overwhelmed with the honesty and melancholy of the answer.

A “Fine” Mess

Beck had already proven himself to be a master of misdirection by the time he recorded Sea Change. You could never quite tell at any time whether he was saluting the various genres he was playing or sending up the absurdity of his trying to tackle them.

But there was no artifice at all attached to Sea Change. Many people mistakenly assume that it was the first time that Beck had taken his foot off the gas pedal on an album. But LPs like One Foor In The Grave and Mutations had already proven that he could play the folkie troubadour, albeit an ironic one, quite well.

What separated Sea Change was the authenticity of the emotions on display. Beck wrote the songs for the album after a longstanding romantic relationship crumbled. For once, he leaned into a confessional lyrical approach. Meanwhile, he and producer Nigel Godrich came up with a sound that highlighted the yearning melodies and lyrics.

Upon its release, Sea Change immediately earned comparisons to other breakup bummer records such as Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks. “Guess I’m Doing Fine”, its title notwithstanding, garnered a ton of praise for the clever way in which Beck went about elucidating his bottomless heartbreak.

Behind the Lyrics of “Guess I’m Doing Fine”

“Guess I’m Doing Fine” finds the narrator confronting the pain he’s feeling, even as he tries to instinctively shrug it off. In the first verse, he finds himself struggling to enjoy pleasures both simple (the song of a bluebird) and vast (“All the jewels in heaven”). “I just wade the tide that turned,” he admits. “’Til I learn to leave the past behind.” From the bereft tone of Beck’s vocals, we can guess it will be a while until he gets there.

The second verse suggests we’re in the aftermath of a great tumult. “All the battlements are empty,” the protagonist explains. His mention of graveyard roses is ominous, but he suggests that he won’t dwell on them: “Got no time to watch them grow.” “I can do whatever pleases me,” he promises, as if he can find anything at all to fit that category in his present state.

In the middle eight, Beck presents a heartbreaking image of an outsider. “Press my face up to the window,” he moans. “To see how warm it is inside/See the things that I’ve been missing/Missing all this time.”

The refrain is the most heart-wrenching part of the song. Faced with utter desolation, he makes feeble jokes about putting on a brave face. “It’s only lies that I’m living,” he belts. “It’s only tears that I’m crying/It’s only you I’m losing/Guess I’m doing fine.”

That half-hearted attempt at a stiff upper lip somehow only deepens our understanding of his sorrow. “Guess I’m Doing Fine” features Beck in top-notch songwriting form, even as the character he’s inhabiting is stranded at rock bottom.

Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for The Art of Elysium