Would You Hire Beck? (Loser, Where It's At, etc..)
December 18, 2013
I'm up over at Fistful of Talent talking about the best way for people to steal the ideas of others and make them their own - it's more ethical than you think, so check out that post here.
One of the pillars of that post is the fact that there really aren't a lot of new ideas available anymore in any industry - and HR is certainly included in that.
But one example that I found of a guy who's pretty much an original innovator is the musician Beck. Check out this story from cracked.com:
"The first and biggest hit of Beck's life would be the result of a bored Beck and his ability to make up random bullshit on the fly.
He had a lot of practice. Before he got famous, Beck played his music anywhere he could -- in clubs, in coffee houses and on the streets of L.A., usually to crowds who couldn't give less of a shit about him. Being the type of guy he is, he'd eventually break out of whatever song he was playing and start making up random lyrics instead, just to see who was paying attention.
This particular skill came into play later when Beck and Carl Stephenson, a producer for Rap-A-Lot Records, spontaneously decided to record a song in Stephenson's kitchen. Beck started rapping, and they both got a laugh out of how terrible he sounded. As they were playing it back, Beck just started sarcastically singing, "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me." Everything else is just random nonsense Beck made up whilestaring at things in Stephenson's kitchen.
The track took six and a half hours to record and produce from start to finish. Beck wasn't happy with the song, it being something he slapped together as a demonstration of how bad he was at rapping, and only agreed to release it under pressure from his label at the time, Bong Load. Because who wouldn't recognize the wisdom of every business decision made by an organization with such a name?
"Loser" got Beck the attention he needed, and he soon got picked up by a real label, Geffen Records, which reissued the song in 1994. It peaked at 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, made Beck a star and was ultimately ranked #203 in Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time." Not bad for a bunch of gibberish made up in a kitchen."
Would you hire Beck for his innovation skills alone? I think I would. Video below (email subscribers click through for video):
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