Beck spoke to Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson this week and shared his 5 Best Songs — a.k.a. five favorites of his that are available on the platform. Beck chose Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning,” Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones,” Aphex Twin’s “Window Licker,” The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” and Tame Impala’s “Solitude Is Bliss.”
Between songs, Beck shared stories about each artist, including the time he listened to Tame Impala with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.
“I remember I was playing [Tame Impala] at my house one afternoon and Thom Yorke walks in and immediately goes over and crouches his ear over to the speaker,” Beck said. “I was like, what the hell is this? [‘Solitude Is Bliss’] had just come out and I was really taken with it and I just had it on repeat.”
The 49-year-old musician recently released an EP recorded at Prince’s Paisley Park Studios, and he recalled meeting the late, great artist: “I remember Prince walking by once with three very large imposing bodyguards and I’d heard that you don’t look at him. I walked by and I did a look and he was coming the other way and somebody elbowed me and said, ‘Did you hear that?’ And I said, ‘What?’ He just very quietly said, ‘Hi Beck.’…He just sort of whispered it.”
Beck’s new album Hyperspace, produced by Pharrell Williams, is out Friday.