Kate — Ben Folds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7BUG8LOd8A

I've written before about Ben Folds; once overwhelmingly positively, and once less so. This song, Kate, is less tainted for me, so to speak. It's not as emotionally immature. If we move past the idea that it's a 31-year-old man (well, at the time) singing about having a crush, it spoke directly to me when I listened to it in 2009, nearly twelve years later. Scary to think it's been four years.

I could talk musically about this — it has some funny tricks with counterpoint and meter; a rhythm section with cowbell I really like; fuzzy guitar and sharp high piano; call-and-response; harmonies and dynamics, clever composition and clever arrangement. But I'm afraid on re-listen it doesn't hold up for me — the lyrics seem shallow, in comparison. Perhaps it's because everything I've listened to after (with the exception of Maroon 5, maybe) has been more lyrically complex (look at any of the other songs on this site). But I think Ben Folds knows about this weakness.

One of my favorite albums of all time, without exception, is his fake leak to Way to Normal. The story goes, he decided on a whim to record a fake version of the album with the same track names but different, terrible music and lyrics, and release it for free as a leak of the real thing on torrent sites. His band got together and recorded the album in a few hours — the lyrics are dumb and repetitive and sung with the voice and intentions of a middle-schooler; the music is simple and poppy and dumb. But somehow it all comes together to be satisfying in the way that only pop can be — he screams and simpers and the piano is dumber and poppier than ever, but it's hilarious and poignant and a good reminder of what it's like to be in middle school, where that sort of feeling seemed like all there was.

Time — Ben Folds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmE4r7i-rLY

I don't know how I feel about Ben Folds. At a time, I loved him — thought his music was perfection, produced and measured and talented (it still is) — thought his lyrics were heart-wrenchingly honest, confessional, true and observant and relevant (they still are) — thought his content was brilliant and prescriptive, the way life really was, helpful to listen to (it isn't). I've changed my mind, I think. Talent nonwithstanding, his meditations on relationships (especially this song) are unhealthy, condescending, counterproductive, and just generally shitty. There's a heavy undercurrent of preachy, holier-than-thou in his work, and it's hard to notice when you're a preachy, holier-than-thou middle-schooler. I still love it, and it's still great, but it's no longer prescriptive — now it's descriptive, music I listen to when I'm feeling blue or bitter or mad. Not music to be in love to.

Magic — Ben Folds (UChicago Voices In Your Head cover)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_zLOnDnFpw

The winter between 2011—2012; I am stranded at a train station on the NJT, trying to make my way back to New York City. The sun set a while back; my backpack is high and dry, but the rest of me is soaked in snow. The trains are delayed; my train comes but skips the station. I have enough time to make it home, sure; and enough iPod battery as well. But my phone is dead, and I'm hungry and broke. And when the train comes, it whisks me through industrial towns and over swamp and underground, and there are lights and homes of towns I couldn't name, and this song is playing, and I experience frisson — sustained, continuous awareness, a heightened sense of being, fueled by hormones, hunger, exhaustion, anxiety, and this music, this incredible music, had I really never heard a cappella before this? Had I really never heard this song before? What have I been doing, where have I been? In this spark, this moment of enlightenment, everything else seems dull: going to school the next day and suffering through US History is dull, eating lunch in the lunchroom is dull, and only by listening to the song again can I bring back a small fraction of the butterflies in my stomach.