The first song from Beck's thirteenth studio album arrived a full two years before the record itself. 'Dreams' hit the world in the summer of 2015, bright and bouncing, a sharp turn away from the hushed melancholy of his previous release Morning Phase. By the time Colors finally appeared on October 13, 2017, fans had already heard four of its ten tracks as singles. The American musician had spent four years recording in a Los Angeles studio with producer Greg Kurstin, and the two of them played nearly every instrument themselves.
A release date that kept slipping
That long gap was never part of the plan. The album was originally scheduled for October 2016, but the date slipped without any public explanation. For months, nobody outside Beck's circle knew what was happening. Then the title and a new release window leaked by accident through a private pre-order page at an online retailer. Beck finally confirmed the album's name and its October 2017 arrival in an official announcement that August, ending a strange period of silence with a shrug and a schedule.
The music itself explained why the wait had been so complicated. 'Dreams' was inspired by the band MGMT and stood as a deliberate contrast to the darker mood of Morning Phase. Beck described the rest of Colors as living somewhere between 'Dreams' and 'Wow', a song he improvised on the spot in the studio without writing it beforehand. The singer said the tracks were complex, trying to do two or three things at once, neither retro nor modern. That kind of balancing act does not happen quickly.
Singles that outran the album
The singles told a strange story of their own. 'Dreams' climbed to the runner-up spot on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, but the version everyone streamed was not the mix that ended up on physical copies of the album. 'Wow' made Billboard's list of the hundred best pop songs of 2016, a full year before the album it belonged to existed. 'Up All Night' had already appeared in the video game FIFA 17 and in an ad for Fossil smartwatches, and it later gave Beck his first chart-topping alternative hit since 'E-Pro' in 2005.
Beck's team leaned into the album's playful side when it came time to promote it. Pop-up shops appeared at well-known markets across the United States, including Melrose Trading Post in Los Angeles and Brooklyn Flea in New York. The music video for the title track arrived in March 2018, directed by Edgar Wright and starring Alison Brie, premiering exclusively on Apple Music. It was a rollout built for attention, but the attention had been building for years without anyone asking for it.
The commercial payoff was solid, if not spectacular. Colors debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 with 46,000 equivalent album units, 41,000 of which were pure sales. It became Beck's sixth album to reach the top ten in the United States. Critics were generally kind, and the record later won two Grammy Awards: Best Alternative Music Album and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. The engineer's trophy mattered because Beck and Kurstin had built almost the entire sound themselves, layer by layer, in one room.
What remains most striking about Colors is how accidental its best moments feel. 'Wow' was never meant to be a single; Beck made it up in the studio and it became one of his most streamed songs. 'Dreams' was a reaction, a deliberate attempt to shake off a mood, and it ended up defining the album's identity before the album even had a name. Beck spent four years trying to make a record that felt effortless, and the delay itself became part of the story. The title track later showed up as a demo project in Logic Pro, a strange afterlife for a song that took so long to arrive.
Beck spent four years trying to make a record that felt effortless, and the delay itself became part of the story.