I'd like to underline that statement about beck being fake. I was pretty confused by this article, I'm really not sure what he's trying to say. It seems to me that he may be saying in the end, Beck's downfall is his inauthenticity. But if that's true then the article is self-defeating. He admits pretty early on that authenticity in music is a sham, and that's so true. ESPECIALLY in Beck's case.

I talked with thenewgreen a few days ago about Bob Dylan, who's one of my favorites regarding what it means to be genuine and whether or not we should care. "Bob Dylan" is an artificial identity, his voice is the source of a lot of criticism but it's also a conscious choice by Zimmerman. But his audience doesn't give a shit. Thenewgreen believes him, I and countless other people believe him, and his name (Dylan, not Zimmerman) is listed along with Guthrie, Seeger, etc.

So I guess what I'm saying is that authenticity as an analytical framework is useless. It's a question that comes up so often, but why should we care as long as we find value in the music for our own identities... Whether beck is a sad guy who's sometimes funny or a funny guy capable of sadness doesn't really matter. We have no way of knowing which is genuine and even if we did it wouldn't change our understanding of the music enough to matter.