| Ben Folds – Cologne Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Christina - You are absolutely right about Nowak actually making her painful trip to kill the new girlfriend. However, when this story first broke, it was assumed that she had gone with diapers and weapons to kill her astronaut boyfriend. So, for the character reading something about this within a day of the event, this is exactly what they would have been reading..... |
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| Ben Folds – The Frown Song Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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This song wears the same sort of anger that Folds directed at the general public for their general apathy in All U Can Eat, but this time his target was much more specific. This is a look at a day in the life of a wealthy, petulant, egomaniacal, unlikeable, shallow woman who could hail from nearly any suburb in the country. Her morning consists of treating her weekly Shiatsu therapy like an unbearable burden, traipsing out to lunch with her friends where she burdens, bullies, and stiffs the waitress, and then heading out for some shoe shopping while she and her comrades trade nasty insults about the various whores who might be fucking the guru from Shiatsu. Her afternoon is spent harrassing and patronizing a bathroom attendant, a youngster working in a coffee shop, and doing a little more shopping at an Anthropolgie store whose ironic title and location will be forever lost on her. Finally, she returns alone for the only moment of seeming joy in her entire day, as she secretly plays the role of "guru slut" that she and her friends had spent the morning ridiculing. Even she cannot escape her own venom. |
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| Ben Folds – Cologne Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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This is spectacular song-writing, and laced with a subtle power that creeps out of Folds' near-whisper, as well as the laugh-out-loud second verse. The first thing Folds' gets here is a laugh, as an American somewhat hyper-conscious about his (mis)pronunciation of the German Koln. On a German tongue, it's not quite as simple as an aftershave. But then this becomes a tragic love-song involving an American whom I believe has come to visit his girlfriend who has been living temporarily in Europe, and ostensibly just told him that she will be staying there, ending their affair. I love the four, three, two, one countdown, as it reads and sounds a little like those self-help mantras. 4,3,2,1 I'm letting you go! Folks who are not Ben Folds fans may be startled or annoyed by the reference to the zaniest news story of the last decade appearing in the next verse. But, really, when you are in heartbreak mode, even a story like that of the NASA astronaut who drove from Houston to Florida wearing a diaper, so determined to kill her lover that nothing, not even potty breaks, was going to stop her -- even this can make you somehow think of your lost love. And finally, my favorite line of the entire song, because it is so very authentic: "When I go to sleep, you'll be waking up." For the singer here, soon to suffer from transatlantic heartbreak, the emotional distance and the physical distance would be overwhelming, but this is exactly the sort of thought that would make the drastically divergent lifes they are about to enter feel so utterly incompatible -- "when I go to sleep, you'll be waking up......" Absolutely fantastic stuff. |
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