Beck - Devils Haircut

What this video is

Released November 1996 as the second single from Beck's landmark album Odelay, 'Devils Haircut' arrived at the precise moment alternative rock had absorbed hip-hop's sample culture into its vocabulary. Romanek's video translates this cultural hybridity visually: a lone eccentric in cowboy attire navigating contemporary New York City streets collapses the mythology of the American West, the urban alienation of New…

Why it matters

A canonical text of 1990s alternative rock video-making, 'Devils Haircut' demonstrates how the MTV era absorbed arthouse cinema grammar into commercial pop promotion. Romanek's vérité-meets-formalism approach — handheld street shooting punctuated by Truffaut freeze-frames — established a template…

The director

Mark Lee Romanek (b. September 18, 1959, Chicago, IL) is an award-winning American director of music videos and feature films. He attended Ithaca College and worked under Brian De Palma before transitioning to music videos via Satellite Films/Propaganda…