Ben Folds - The Frown Song

I know I only posted a Ben Folds track a few days ago but this is such a good track it makes me slightly giddy. 

Ben Folds - The Frown Song

I've read a few blogs where people are saying that Way To Normal is good but not as good as previous albums. While that's a perfectly valid thing to say if it's true, I'm not convinced that it is true in this case. I've noticed that people always say this about artists who've been going for a while and I reckon it's often less about the music that's released, and more about the people who are listening. Nostalgia is a problem. It's the whole rose-tinted lenses thing. When they're thinking about old albums they now love, people tend to forget the things they didn't like when they first listened to it. It's very, very rare that you instantly love everything about an album. Rather, you get very excited about the bits that grab you instantly, and you just like the rest of it. And as you listen more and more, you start to love the bits you didn't quite get to begin with. Pretty soon you'll be loving the whole thing. 

What I'm saying to you people is that it's important to give yourselves time to fall in love with new music. And to be aware that the more you listen to an album, the more you get to know it, and the more you're gonna like it. If you expect something to be brilliant, it almost inevitably doesn't live up to your expectations (this happened to me with Silence of the Lambs, which left me totally underwhelmed when I first watched it as I was expecting the scariest experience of my life). And that is the end of my sermon and I will shut up now. Here's the lyrics to "The Frown Song".

Tread slowly from the car to the spa
Like a weary war-torn refugee
Crossing the border with your starving child
It's a struggle just to get to shiatsu

Present the waitress with your allergy card
And tell her all your problems
And leave no tip at all
Down to the shoe store with your friends
Speculate who might be fucking the guru

Rock on, rock on, with your fashionable frown
Rock on, rock on, spread the love around
Rock on, rock on, with your fashionable frown
Spread the love around

Do you remember how we managed before
We could afford real nervous breakdowns
Or before the Anthropologie store
Was erected on Indian burial grounds

So really don't you see a little of yourself
In the bathroom attendant that you just scowled at
Or the child who's hiding inside
As you wipe the smile off the teenage barista

[Chorus]

All right

You're gonna be all right, baby
You're gonna be all right, baby

Floating back from the spa to the car
A state of bliss, and it wasn't the steam room
Sometimes life's not so bad
Now we know who's been fucking the guru

[Chorus]