Video of the Week – “The Bed Song”

I’ve profiled this song before as a “Song of the Week,” and it is still one of the best songs that I’ve heard recently. Amanda Palmer has released a “new and improved” version of the song, including the video for this song. When I received the e-mail announcing the video, I actively avoided watching it, primarily because the song is so emotional. Even though I have heard the song a lot, it is still not one that I can listen to with others around, because it makes me mist up. I was worried the video would have the same outcome, and low and behold, I was right. If this doesn’t stir some kind of feeling up in you after you view it, you may not be human. That, or you have a perfect life that hasn’t been affected by loss or other forms of heartache.

Until next time…

Song of the Week – My Sweet Annette

This week’s song might be considered a slight departure from some of the other songs that I have profiled in the past. I don’t remember how exactly I was introduced to the Drive-by Truckers, but they ended up as an add to my music collection when I bought a “Best of…” compilation of iTunes sometime last year. Their mix of rock and country usually isn’t my cup of tea, and I have since limited the number of their songs that I have in rotation on my iPod. Nevertheless, this one song still sticks around because I like songs that tell stories and this one is no different. Continue reading “Song of the Week – My Sweet Annette” →

Song of the Week – Do It Anyway

Meant to put this up yesterday but forgot. As mentioned in my last post, Ben Folds Five “returned” to the world with a new album The Sound of the Life of the Mind, and the first “single” was the great “Do It Anyway” with a video produced by Chris Hardwick and starring the Fraggles, Anna Kendrick, and Rob Corddry.

After watching that about thirty times like I did, here are the lyrics: Continue reading “Song of the Week – Do It Anyway” →

Song of the Week – Smoke

While I am still trying to figure out which of the tracks from the new Ben Folds Five album The Sound of the Life of the Mind is my favorite, I thought I would go back to the Ben Folds Five well for this week’s Song of the Week. It’s another song that may not have ranked all that high when I did Ben Folds by Track last year, but it has recently been playing a bunch as I shuffle through all my music, and it is a great song to frighten unsuspecting passengers when driving back from Wendover and they think you are sleeping (looking at you, Megan).

That song is “Smoke” from the album Whatever and Ever Amen. With my change in opinion on this song and “Magic” from a while ago, I think I might have to redo my by track ratings while inserting the ten tracks from the new album. In the meantime, here are the lyrics to what I now view as a pretty underrated song, written by Folds and his ex-wife/writing partner Anna Goodman. My favorite version is the version with the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra from this album, but the original album version is still good in its own right:

Leaf by leaf,
And page by page,
Throw this book away.
All the sadness,
All the rage,
Throw this book away.

Rip out the binding
And tear the glue.
All the grief we never even knew.
We had it all along,
Now it’s…smoke.

All the things we’ve written in it,
Never really happened.
All the things we’ve written in it,
Never really happened.
All of the people come and gone,
Never really lived,
And all the people come have gone,
No one to forgive.
Smoke.

We will not write a new one.
There will never be anew one,
Another one, another one.

Here’s an evening dark with shame,
Throw it on the fire.
Here’s the time I took the blame,
Throw it on the fire.
Here is the view we didn’t speak, it seemed, for years and years,
And here’s the secret no one will ever know.
No reasons for the tears,
Made of smoke.
Smoke.
Smoke.

We will not write a new one.
There will never be a new one,
Another one,
Another one.
Another one.

Where do all the secrets live,
They travel in the air.
You can smell them when they burn,
Travelling.

Those who say the past is not dead,
Come and smell the smoke.
You keep saying the past is not dead,
Stop and smell the smoke.
You keep on saying the past is not even past,
You keep saying,
We are smoke.
Smoke.

– Ben Folds Five, Whatever and Ever Amen

Until next time…