Beck Says He Is Still Learning, Ahead of New Album ‘Ride Lonesome’

Beck’s fifteenth studio album is on the way, and he is approaching it less like a veteran cashing in a legacy and more like someone still working something out. In a cover interview for DIY’s October 2026 issue, the singer discusses ‘Ride Lonesome’ and the strange position of being three decades into a career while feeling like the real work has only just begun.

“Honestly, I feel like I’m just figuring out what I’m doing. I’m just starting to get good,” he says in the feature. “Like okay, now we’re going, now we’re ready, now we can start doing some things.”

That claim reads differently given the record he is defending. Since the early nineties Beck has moved through alt-rock, folk, funk, hip hop, electronica and country without settling into any of them permanently, which is precisely why his catalogue resists a tidy summary. He is candid about the cost of that restlessness, describing long stretches of experimenting and “riding the chaos” to see what came out. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not.

He measures himself against the wrong yardstick on purpose, noting that artists like Bob Dylan or David Bowie had rebuilt their sound several times over by thirty. Beck’s version of arrival is slower and more incremental: an understanding of method that arrives late, and then gets used.

‘Ride Lonesome’ is the next test of that.