Play

Do It Anyway (Ben Folds Five Fragglepella Cover)

Liam Dryden

whoops I made it downloadable

You Don't Know Me

Ben Folds (feat Regina Spektor)

You Don’t Know Me - Ben Folds feat. Regina Spektor

Play

Listen

Do It Anyway - Ben Folds Five

And if you’re paralysed by a voice in your head
It’s the standing still that should be scaring you instead

Brick

Ben Folds Five

Brick - Ben Folds Five

“She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly
Off the coast and I’m headed nowhere
She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly” 

Do It Anyway

Ben Folds Five

Ben Folds Five - Do It Anyway

And if you’re paralyzed by a voice in your head
It’s the standing still that should be scaring you instead
Go on and
Do it anyway

This isn’t my favorite song on the album - that would be Draw A Crowd - but the lyrics here get me.

Also… I’m not sure how or when it happened, but at some point Ben Folds’ piano-playing became the least talked about part of this band. This song brings it squarely back into focus; holy crap, what an incredible performance.

Stephen Colbert on the Ben Folds Five song "The Best Imitation of Myself"

  • COLBERT: Yeah, he was on my show two nights ago, and I really like Ben Folds. Every night, actually, on my show, just for fun at one of the commercial breaks, we usually play his song "Steven's Last Night in Town." And we'll sometimes play - I love the song "Philosophy" by Ben Folds. And I mean, I like a lot of his stuff. But there's one particular song that is - that I just love called "The Best Imitation of Myself." And there's sort of an obvious resonance for me because I do an imitation of myself professionally. And the lyrics go: You know, I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest so I can be for you who you want to see. I got the gesture and sound, got the timing down. It's uncanny. Yeah, you'd think it was me. Do you think I should take a class to lose my Southern accent? Did I make me up or make the face till it stuck? I do the best imitation of myself. And when I first heard the song, it was just a few years ago actually, somehow this song had escaped my notice, I just thought he had written it for me. But then when I listened to it more, I though it's just a beautiful expression on how we are toward each other as people. We don't think that we are sufficient for each other, that no one wants to know the real me or the whole me. I just want to give you the part of me that I think you expect to see from me and almost as if that little part of me is more than the whole of me, 'cause I don't want to give you any of the poison, I only want to give you the meat of me. Do you know what I mean?
  • GROSS: Yes.
  • COLBERT: And this constant slight changing of our mask, or as Eliot says in "Prufrock," time to prepare a face for the faces that we meet. I just hadn't heard in a song in the same way as this one. And I just, I couldn't love this song more.

Video Killed The Radio Star

Ben Folds Five

“Video Killed The Radio Star” | Ben Folds Five

perfect cover

You know what hope is? Hope is a bastard. Hope is a liar, a cheat and a tease. Got no place in days like these.

“But then came “Brick,” the band’s improbable 1998 hit, a song I knew was about Folds’ high school girlfriend having an abortion before I was entirely sure what an abortion was. The number of times I’ve heard the song over the past 15 years likely registers somewhere in the high hundred-thousands, but when they played it at the Tabernacle last week, it hit me as if for the first time. Something about the particular tenor of the crowd’s collective cheer as Folds leaned into the first few piano notes set me on edge. I eventually realized I was gripping the arms of my chair, my breathing shallow. I always knew it was a true story, or true for him at least, but never considered how this woman is still out there somewhere — this woman who when she was not much more than a little girl made a big, hard choice; this woman whose perhaps rawest moment was then folded neatly into a song that has since become almost inescapable, still shuffled through grocery store radio and Nineties Alternative Pandora stations — and all we know about her is that she’s a brick, she’s weighing him down, she’s holding him back. I used to think it was sweet he bought her flowers. I don’t think it’s sweet anymore. I am all of a sudden unable to hear the song as anything but an act of sad, cold, slow-moving public revenge in which she never will get a say.”

—Rachael Maddux wrote an amazing essay about Ben Folds Five’s reunion for BuzzFeed Music. I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing!
Play
Loading more posts...