My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that’s the right song to not fight the lyric.
BEN FOLDSBut I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that’s the center of it, that is it. It’s almost like there’s something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you’re a songwriter that sings your material.
More Ben Folds Quotes
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I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.
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Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.
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Even though I live in America more, I feel like when I go to Adelaide, that’s when I get to go home.
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If you can’t draw a crowd, draw dicks on the wall
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I think people use temp music quite a bit, but the people who write the temp music don’t ever really learn that their music was inspiring a movie.
BEN FOLDS -
In many ways, I’ve chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don’t like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.
BEN FOLDS -
Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I’ve got Joni Mitchell records, and they’re great, and I couldn’t possibly be that good.
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If the melody is telling me this is what the song is about, then I’m sort of forced into confession, autobiography or fantasy. If I don’t do that, I’ve hamstrung the melody.
BEN FOLDS -
I look to an out gay man or woman as pretty much what I would aspire to. The strength that it takes to do that and the floodgates that open and what they pay for it.
BEN FOLDS -
It’s a tough thing to know that when you’re making your album, you’re going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.
BEN FOLDS -
A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they’ve seen everything.
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Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible – it wasn’t an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.
BEN FOLDS -
I drink a lot, probably too much. My scene while writing lyrics is always a bottle of scotch and stacks of note cards, pencil and pencil sharpener. I throw around note cards and drink.
BEN FOLDS -
Next door, there’s an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I’m sorry, I know that’s a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.
BEN FOLDS -
If I’m in a relationship and my girlfriend is sleeping with other people, I don’t need to know who it is; I just want to know how she feels about it.
BEN FOLDS