YMMV / Ben Folds

• Awesome Music:
  • The Epic Instrumental Opener to "Narcolepsy," and the beginning of "Erase Me."
  • "Steven's Last Night In Town" combines the trio with the Klezmer group the Klezmatics, making it epic.
  • His songs for Over the Hedge.
  • The "Ass Crack Bandit" song from Community.
• Broken Base: His collaboration with Nick Hornsby, Lonely Avenue. Some say it's the best collection of songs he's ever written, while others feel that Hornsby's writing isn't musical enough.
• Epic Riff: Ben frequently does a piano version; notable ones include "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces", "Annie Waits", "Landed" and "Philosophy".
• Heartwarming Moments
  • The "Do It Anyway" video with Anna Kendrick and Fraggle Rock. SO FUN!
  • "Gracie," a Parental Love Song written for his then five-year-old daughter. It's the closest he's ever come to writing a completely sincere love song.
  • "The Luckiest" is too. adorable. for. words.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Rockin' The Suburbs" has a line about going to the store for some Preperation H after feeling someone "sending dirty vibes my way." You could swear that this was meant to be a pun on "butthurt," but that word was still a few years away from being invented!
• Jerkass Woobie: The narrator of "Landed," who shuns his friends and loved ones at the behest of his possessive girlfriend/wife.
  If you wrote me off
  I'd understand it
  'Cause I've been on
  Some other planet
• Mind Screw: The "Weird Al" Yankovic-directed video for "Rockin' The Suburbs."
• Signature Song: Ben Folds Five's is "Brick", while Ben's solo would probably be either "Landed" or "Rockin' the Suburbs". Ben has said that "The Luckiest" is the song he gets the most feedback for, as it's become a hugely popular wedding song.
• Strangled by the Red String: Discussed and inverted while still played straight in "From Above", a song about two people who keep running into each-other, know that they should be together, but end up marrying other people and living unfulfilling lives.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: "Brick" got a considerable amount of static from both fans of the band and their immediate peers for being so different from their usual high-energy alt. rock. It only got worse when it became their only big radio hit. Ben himself acknowledged this in his iTunes Original interview.
  "When you have a hit song, much of your fanbase and people that listen to your music... their opinion is gonna be loud and clear that they feel that you've abandoned the fanbase; you've written something that's not for them, it's for everybody else, you've 'sold out', all kinds of things like that... That was the overwhelming vibe... 'What is that crap?'... because we'd been playing silly, up-tempo... we were the piano band that rocks... We couldn't even fit the song into a show."
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Woe to any poor parent who lets their child listen to the profane and politically incorrect original version of "Rockin' The Suburbs" after hearing the profanity-free rewrite from the Over the Hedge and assumes that they're one and the same.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: "Brick", about a girlfriend of his getting an abortion, decidedly takes no stance on abortion itself and sticks solely to Ben's melancholy recollection of the events described.

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