When you’re eight years old, few things excite you more than swear words. You’re at that sweet spot where you know pretty much every bad word in existence, but you’re still a few years away from the point where you can use them in casual conversation. That was why, in 1998, I tried my best to get my mom to let me watch South Park, would eagerly await the one swear word that would slip through in any PG-rated movie I watched, and loved “Song For The Dumped” by Ben Folds Five more than any other song in the world.
Yes, a full 13 years before CeeLo Green got to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 with a song called “F*ck You,” Ben Folds won our hearts with a song whose chorus was “gimme my money back / gimme my money back, you b*tch!” a phrase my second-grade classmates and I would often chant on the bus ride home (a year later, we would be mesmerized by the use of “b*tch” and “d*ck” in The Offspring’s “Why Don’t You Get A Job”). To 8-year-old me, that song was the most fun thing in the world, so imagine my surprise when I heard the other big single from Whatever And Ever Amen, the incredibly depressing “Brick.”
When I heard “Brick” for the first time — for the first hundred times even — I didn’t know that it was about an abortion. I didn’t even know what an abortion was. But I could tell that it was extremely sad, telling the tale of two people going through a miserable experience together and not knowing how to deal with it. Mostly, I wondered how a guy who had made me laugh so hard was now leaving me on the verge of tears.
But that’s pretty much what Ben Folds does. He suckers us in with his quick wit (and love of a good swear word), and when we get to the meat of his albums, he breaks our hearts. This was never more true than on his solo debut, 2001’s Rockin’ The Suburbs. The title track is a prime example of Fun Ben, as he jokingly sings about “what it’s like / bein’ male, middle class and white.” It’s a hilarious song about someone who knows how privileged he is, but still feels the need to complain about every difficulty he faces, despite being fully aware of how ridiculous that is. It’s one of Folds’ more memorable songs, and it’s also completely unlike just about any other song on the album.
No, Rockin’ The Suburbs abounds with dark themes throughout. There’s “Fred Jones Part 2,” a tale of an unremarkable man who is “forgotten but not gone,” there’s the tragic hero of “Not The Same,” and of course, there’s “Still Fighting It,” a tale of the difficulties of growing up that I related to way too much when I discovered it during my sophomore year of high school. To be honest, the first few times I heard Rockin’ the Suburbs, I actually hated it, if only because I couldn’t overcome the cognitive dissonance of hearing the title track and laughing, and then having almost every other track be so damn sad. Even “Fired,” the only other track on the album to be a little bit funny, gets its humor from a man running into a room and cheerfully telling everyone they’ve lost their jobs. But once I got over the initial shock, the album grew on me, and proved to be incredibly rewarding.
The same holds true for much of Folds work; it’s the jokes that suck you in, but it’s the lyrical depth of the deep cuts that makes you want to stay. Sure, maybe your gateway to his music was his ridiculous cover of “B*tches Ain’t Sh*t,” or the aforementioned “Song For The Dumped,” but chances are, it was the heavier and, yes, sadder stuff that really stuck with you. A nerdy white guy saying cuss words is only going to be funny for so long, and while Fun Ben likely got a lot people in the door, Serious Ben’s ability to write about dark subjects in an incredibly frank, honest fashion is why he’s been able to cultivate such a large fan-base over the years. The silly stuff is fun, but the songs with substance matter a lot more.
