Ben Folds By Track – Track #2

See here for the idea behind this series of blogs. Here we go onto the next tracks from the Ben Folds (Five) catalog.

1. “Zak and Sara” from “Suburbs” – A perfect follow up to “Annie Waits,” it just seems to flow well when listening to the entire album. When I made the “Best of Ben Folds” for someone, this song ended up as the second track, right behind “Annie Waits.” The flow is that great that it is hard to separate the songs from each other.
2. “Don’t Change Your Plans” from “Reinhold Messner” – This song has special meaning in my life right now (kinda), like I tend to do with a lot of Ben Folds’ songs. But I could write its own post about how certain Ben Folds songs really seem to fit with things that happened in my life, as lame as that is. In my opinion, this is one of the stronger tracks from “Messner,” and definitely in the top three Track Twos.
3. “Philosophy” from “Ben Folds Five” – One of my all time favorite Ben Folds Five songs. Even though I didn’t originally listen to Ben Folds Five until “Whatever and Ever Amen” came out, when I went back and listened to this album, I found that I enjoyed the majority of the songs on the album. Truly an authentic Ben Folds sound.
4. “Fair” from “Whatever and Ever Amen” – As far as album flow goes, the beginning of this song really detracts from the opening provided by “One Angry Dwarf.” However, as this was the album that made me learn to like Ben Folds (Five), I think that while it is weak compared to many other tracks on “Whatever,” it is at least in the middle of the Track Twos.
5. “Dr. Yang” from “Way to Normal” – Much better than the track that led off this album, this song really set the stage for the rest of “Way to Normal.” This song suffers, however, when compared to the “fake” version of the song “Lovesick Diagnostician.” Awesome piano playing on this track though.
6. “You to Thank” from “Silverman” – The lyrics of this song make you feel that you are at the shotgun wedding of the folks that the song is about. Like “Picture Window,” however, it suffers from strong competition from the other Track Twos and gets placed in the bottom half of the rankings.
7. “Picture Window” from “Lonely Avenue” – I like the orchestrations from this song, and the lyrics are amongst the strongest from the Nick Hornby/Folds collaboration. But it can’t crack the top half of the rankings of the Track Twos, primarily because of the strong competition from the other songs on the list.

Average ranking by album to this point:

1. “Rockin’ the Suburbs” – 1 (2)
2. “Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner” – 2.5 (5)
3. “Whatever and Ever Again” – 3 (6)
4. “Ben Folds Five” – 4.5 (9)
5. “Songs for Silverman” – 5.5 (11)
6. “Lonely Avenue” – 5.5 (11)
7. “Way to Normal” – 6 (12)

Until next time…