Three months ago, when Ben Folds dropped the lead single for his first new album in 8 years, I wrote briefly about how I was only ever a reluctant Ben Folds fan:

-How I actively avoided Ben Folds as a painfully self-conscious male pianist growing up in the ‘90s playing prelude in Priesthood, because being repeatedly told I’d make a “natural” fan of a self-described “Punk rock[er] for sissies” felt like a really back-handed compliment;

-How annoyed I was at having it repeatedly explained to me that his biggest hit “Brick” was about an abortion, as though that were a profound insight;

-How even as a shy, awkward teen, I found the nerd-rage on tracks like “Song for the Dumped” and “Two Hundred Solemn Faces and One Angry Dwarf” to be off-putting and cringe;^[1]Seriously, Whatever and Ever Amen is so overrated.

-How nevertheless the one-two punch of 1999’s The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner and 2001’s Rockin’ The Suburbs so overwhelmed me with their beauty and compassion that I finally gave in to my destiny and became a Ben Folds fan;

-How “Not the Same” became my unofficial, retroactive Mission anthem;

-How I still listen to “Army” in moments of great personal turmoil;

-How I even played “The Luckiest” at my wedding;

-How nevertheless, though all his subsequent releases have had their moments, they’ve uniformly failed to measure up to his twin, turn-of-the-millennium masterpieces—such that I didn’t particularly notice or care when he fell silent for nearly a decade.

Yet ever since What Matters Most was first announced in February, I’ve been silently ruminating in my spare moments as to what separates a transcendent Ben Folds track from a merely OK one. And I think I’ve settled on the same word I used just now to describe Messner and Suburbs: compassion.

Some etymology: compassion is a portmanteau of the Latin com, meaning “with”^[2]as it is still used today in the Portuguese “com” and Spanish “con”, and the Latin pati (participle: passus), meaning “to suffer” (hence why we use “the Passions of the Christ” to describe His scourgings and crucifixion)^[3]pati, incidentally, is also the Latin root for “patience”—that is, when someone tells you to be patient, they are literally telling you to suffer.. Put together then, to be compassionate means literally “to suffer with.” By way of comparison, Alma 7:12 declares that the purpose of Christ’s Atonement wasn’t just to overcome death and cleanse us of our sins, but to “succor” and comfort us in our “infirmities”:

“And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.”

That is, Christ suffered his passions in part so that he could better show us compassion, to “suffer with us,” so that we in turn might better suffer with each other.^[4]And yes, I’m fully aware that Fold was raised irreligious; he also wrote a song called “Jesusland” that is all about the melancholy of living amidst the evangelicals of his native … Continue reading Hence, when Ben Folds markets his latest album What Matters Most as being “generous”—and since generosity is core to compassion—I cautiously get my hopes up that it will perhaps be the compassionate Ben Folds on display here.

Indeed, all the premier tracks off Reinhold Messner–“Narcolepsy,” “Don’t Change Your Plans,” “Mess,” “Magic,” “Hospital Song,” “Army”–as well as off Suburbs–“Annie Waits,” “Still Fighting It,” “Fred Jones Part 2,” “The Ascent of Stan,” “Losing Lisa,” “Carrying Cathy”–are the ones that show compassion for others. Even when he’s expressing his own personal hurt, his best songs still demonstrate a keen awareness of other people’s hurt, too. Per Mosiah 18:10, he uses his pain to “mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.”

By contrast, his least-interesting tracks in my opinion are the ones that show no awareness whatsoever of someone else’s hurt. A big part of my irritation with “Brick,” I think, is that he only ever expresses how the abortion affected him, not the poor girl he knocked up. (Note how the chorus, “She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly”, implies that she’s the one dragging him down–as though he didn’t have a thing to do with her pregnancy! Of all the nerve!) Likewise, his nerd-rage on “Song for the Dumped” exhibits zero self-awareness that his temper is perhaps why his date wants to break up with him in the first place.^[5]To quote the evergreen Margaret Atwood, “Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them.”

For that matter, the title track to Rockin’ the Suburbs is the one blemish on an otherwise flawless record, precisely because it’s the one song that isn’t compassionate. It’s just a petulant, instantly-dated diss-track against Jonathan Davis of Korn^[6]my goodness, does anyone even remember anymore that Korn was once the biggest band in America?!, who had said “Ben Folds Five f—ing sucks!” in a long-forgotten interview.^[7]Though if Davis was referring to Whatever and Ever Amen specifically, I am forced to agree with him. And yes, Davis’s slam on Folds was uncalled for, but Davis was also abused as a child and nu-metal was on its way out anyways, so maybe Folds could’ve just been the bigger man and let it slide? Even when the song is self-deprecating, that’s just another way of saying it’s self-absorbed. (Certainly it never “mourns with those that mourn…”)

Compassion, then, is what separates the merely goofy Ben Folds tracks from the great ones.

In fact, the first two singles for What Matters Most provide a useful contrast between his best and worst tendencies. Although they at first blush appear to be very similar (uptempo piano-pop based on a personal experience on tour), in execution they arrive at very different places. The first single, “Winslow Gardens,” relates how he had to scramble to lease an apartment last-minute in Sydney, Australia, after he got trapped there on tour at the dawn of the COVID-19 lockdowns. He eventually had to remotely auction off his house and belongings back in upstate New York while quarantined in Australia, never getting to see his old home again, all as he gradually came to establish a new home Down Under.

Now, Ben Folds’ COVID-19 experience is of course unique to him, and not one that most of us non-rock-stars would find relatable.^[8]It wasn’t even all that much of a culture shock for him; he’d previously lived in Adelaide with his second wife (he’s now on his fifth) while recording Rockin’ the Suburbs. Nevertheless, the song’s central theme–that “some trips just go one way,” that sometimes life leads you to settle down someplace you’d never dreamt of before–is almost painfully relatable! How many of us have moved to a new town, a new state, even a new country–whether for school or work or family emergency or what have you–under the assumption that this place would be but a quick stop on our way to somewhere else, only to somehow find ourselves putting down roots and living there long-term? How many of us have been shocked to find a stepping stone start to feel like home?

It happened to my Wyoming-born Dad, who only moved to Washington state fresh out of college for his first teaching job, then ended up working his entire career there; it happened to my Arizona-born Mom, who ended up buried there. I currently live and work in New Jersey–far, far away from where I grew up in Washington–and I’ll admit, I’ve been feeling that vibe lately! James Joyce famously said that in the particular is found the universal; and in the particularity of Ben Folds’ COVID-19 experience, he was able to express something far more universal and resonant. It is a genuinely compassionate song.

The same cannot be said, however, of second single “Exhausting Lover.”^[9]And that’s the one that got the stupid music video! This story-song narrates an incident that also once befell Folds on tour, wherein he got hit on by an aggressive groupie at a “truck-stop parking lot.” He quickly becomes overwhelmed, terrified, and carpet-burned by her, before being chased “half-naked past the Cracker Barrel” by her angry boyfriend. The song is catchy, kinda funny, and self-deprecating–similar to “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” but which you know coming from me is not a compliment.

The main issues for me are: 1) there’s not really any resonances for us non-rock-stars; 2) the song frankly feels more like of a humble-brag than a funny story; but more importantly, 3) there’s not really any compassion here. Ben Folds even explicitly quotes the girl’s Daddy-issues in verse three (“Here nerd, beat my a** in the bath like my dad did/when I was a bad kid”), but there is zero follow-up, no attempt to understand her nor interest in figuring out what makes this clearly damaged and self-destructive young woman tick. “Carrying Cathy” this is not.

Third single “Back to Anonymous,” in fact, tries to split the difference between these two warring tendencies within Folds. Lyrically, this gentle song meditates on how his Rock Star years are now well behind him, how he can just “just go for a stroll” undisguised, without being recognized, no longer accosted by “Strangers/Creepy and comfortable that they knew my name,” or how the “neighbors, they don’t wink like they know.” He’s ambivalent both about his old fame (“It’s not at all what I thought that fame would be/It was just a small world for a while”) and his loss of it (“It’s not so much that I wanted out/I really didn’t have a say”). Good on him for being thoughtful about music career, I suppose, but again, not really a whole lot for us never-Rock-Stars to empathize with^[10]As he noted on that William Shatner album he once produced, “Has been” is still better than “Never was”.

Yet he at least attempts to be compassionate of others: “But it’s a big world/With un-famous people who deserve/The grand applause,” he sings, “And they quietly carry on/I’d like to think that I could be that strong”. Now, I usually find it condescending and insufferable when celebrities play the “salute-the-little-people” card, and I’m not sure Folds fully redeems the trope here (though it’s definitely the prettiest of the first three singles); but he is also still self-aware enough to preemptively note, “Is it cliche/Does it sound so ungrateful/When it comes out that way?” He is at least trying to think about others, even when he’s still thinking mainly of himself. But then, don’t we all.

Another intriguing example of these twin tendencies in Ben Folds is the album’s center-piece “Kristine From the 7th Grade,” a mournful French-waltz about looking up an old childhood friend on social media, only to find her profile drenched with “cryptic, dark Bible quotes/Guns and dead fetuses;” he drolly observes that “The anger, the all caps/all the pseudoscience/The misspellings, they must be on purpose/We went to a good school, Kristine.” Now, we all definitely know our own Kristines from 7th grades nowadays^[11]Maybe you are a Kristine from 7th grade! (this is certainly another example of Folds finding the universal in the particular). However, one can still easily accuse Folds here of being as vicious and self-righteous as he accuses Kristine of being^[12]If Folds still isn’t nearly as mean-spirited as Kristine, well, to quote Seneca, it is not goodness to be better than the worst..

Yet one can just as easily read him as showing compassion towards his childhood friend, as he tells her “this world can be wonderful too, yeah/Do you ever see it that way?”, inviting her to be a little less on-line— ”There’s a break in the rain/A perfect time for a walk/The smell of wet leaves/And warm smiles and hellos/These things exist in the real world, you know.” Indeed, both readings are valid: He is being simultaneously self-absorbed towards her and compassionate towards her. He is, again, both at once.

This haphazard mix of the compassionate with the self-absorbed has been standard for pretty much all of Ben Folds’ post-millennial releases. You apparently cannot have one without the other (“There must needs be opposition in all things,” I guess). The only real question when evaluating a new Ben Folds album becomes: what is the ratio of compassionate to self-absorbed this time? Do his best impulses here ultimately outnumber his worse (which I suppose is the best that any of us can ask of ourselves in this life)? Overall, does What Matters Most live up to its billing as “generous”?

I think I can at least say that generosity is the intended trajectory of the album entire. Case in point: The opening track “But Wait, There’s More” is, like “Winslow Gardens,” a-tuned to our present moment, and why the need for compassion is now more dire than ever. “What used to be extreme’s now a bore,” he soberly notes–and lest we forget why the extreme went mainstream in the first place, he makes allusion to certain election lies that were dangerously spouted in front of a certain Four Seasons Landscaping: “That freak show in the landscaping parking lot/Was oh so funny then, now it’s not.”

Whether anyone found those election lies all that funny even in 2020 is up for debate; but he isn’t out of line to ask wearily, “Did we really think we’d go back to normal?/Did we really ever think we could cut that cord?/’Cause look who’s coming back, coming back for more.” Christ himself foretold a time when “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved”^[13]Matt. 24:12-13. Hence our ability to love–that is, to have compassion–is integral to our capacity to be saved in tumultuous times.

Hence why Folds also asks, not sarcastically, not ironically, but sincerely, even anxiously, “Do you still believe in the good of humankind?/I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.” To paraphrase Alma 32:27, he perhaps only has a desire to believe at this point, but he is at least letting that belief work in him. It is the best any of us can do.

Indeed, not just the opening song, but the entire album recognizes that being generous and compassionate is so much easier said than done. The finale “Moments” declares, “Let’s tell ourselves that’s it’s great to be alive”—which of course is something you only have to tell yourself when it’s no longer obvious. As GK Chesterton once said, society only produces optimists when it has ceased to produce happy men; but then, if you wish to bring back happiness, you have to start somewhere.

Overall, I think What Matters Most has a positive ratio of compassionate to self-absorbed—not perfect, but still facing in the right direction.^[14]Hugh Nibley once said that the marker of a righteous man isn’t where he is on the staircase, but what direction he’s facing: a person at the bottom of the stairs facing up is infinitely … Continue reading Missteps aside, its heart is ultimately in the right place.

For what it’s worth then, here’s where the album lands in my personal ranking of Ben Folds’ studio discography:

Much better hit-to-miss ratio than Way to Normal (2008), his wretched Nick Hornby collaboration Lonely Avenue (2010), and Whatever and Ever Amen (1997).

Slightly better ratio than Supersunnyspeedgraphic (2006) and The Sound of the Life of the Mind (2012).

Just below his debut Ben Folds Five (1995), Songs for Silverman (2005), and his yMusic collaboration So There (2015).

Reinhold Messner and Rockin’ the Suburbs remain his undisputed GOATs.

Do with that ranking what you will. But even if you completely disagree with it, remember to be compassionate—to follow President Nelson’s recent admonition to be civil and kind in our polarizing times–to remember that “if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity is the greatest of all”^[15]Moroni 7:46—because (as Ben Folds intuits in his best moments; as we all do) love really is what matters most.