The Information is the tenth studio album by American musician Beck, released on October 3, 2006 by Interscope Records. It was produced and mixed by Nigel Godrich, with whom Beck recorded Mutations (1998) and Sea Change (2002). Recording took place from 2003 to 2006, with Beck concurrently working on 2005's Guero with the Dust Brothers. The album received positive reviews from critics and made several publications' year-end lists. Recording Before its release, Beck said the album was not a "stripped down" record, in contrast with his previous Godrich collaborations, Mutations and Sea Change. According to Beck, "Nigel [Godrich] said he wanted to do a hip-hop record" before they began work on the album. "And in a way it is, and in a way it isn't. It has hip-hop songs, and my previous work with him was Mutations and Sea Change, these sort of introspective records, and so this new one is sort of bringing those two worlds together." In an interview with the BBC, Beck said the album had been "painful" to make: Artwork The album was issued with a blank sleeve and booklet and one of four different sheets of stickers for fans to make their own album art. Beck explained to Wired magazine that he wanted no two copies of the CD cover to be the same: "The artwork is going to be customizable. The idea is to provide something that calls for interactivity." However, because the album art concept was seen as a gimmick to bolster retail sales, The Information was deemed ineligible to enter the UK Albums Chart. Promotion A series of low budget videos were made for every song on the album. Beck explained the making of these videos—which would also appear on video-sharing site YouTube—to Wired: Beck leaked tracks and videos on his web site months ahead of the album's release. "We're moving into a time when the song and the imagery and video are all able to exist as one thing," said Beck. "It's not even technically an audio thing anymore. It's something else." He also remarked, "I've been trying to do something like this for the last three albums," having released several versions of his previous album Guero (2005), including a deluxe CD/DVD package and a remix album called Guerolito (2005). "The conventional ways aren't working like they used to, so now there's a willingness to try new things." The first single