I think the first time I really became aware of Ben Folds Five would have been back in about 2004 or so, when I asked my mother who the strange man yelling the words, “give me my money back, you bitch” on the radio was. Soon though, I would discover a veritable treasure trove of music from one of the most versatile figures in alt-pop ever.
As I entered high school, and slowly became more aware of Ben Folds’ solo work, I began to look back into the back catalogue of his first popular group, Ben Folds Five. Comprising of only three members, the band had released a total of three albums up this point, and had been broken up since 2000. While they would late reform for a few years, recording a new album in 2012, I found myself with only three short records to introduce myself to.
While I was a big fan of 1997’s Whatever And Ever Amen, and I certainly didn’t hate 1995’s Ben Folds Five, I couldn’t find myself getting into the band’s third album, The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner. While the album was arguably a bit more stylistically different than the rest, the tunes seemed to have a much more avant-garde feel to them, especially when it came to the lead single, ‘Army’.
The first time I heard ‘Army’, I felt it to be so verbose and long-winded that I couldn’t really get into it. While I enjoyed it on face value, I spent so much time trying to unpack what was being said that I tended to forget to enjoy the track, leading me to write it up as a rather forgettable hit.
However, as the years went by, I found myself circling back to this track, and its accompanying album, as I realised I had exhausted all of my resources for new Ben Folds Five material, leading me to think about experimenting with that last album. While I did find myself a fan of the record (‘Mess‘ is a heck of a track, to be fair), ‘Army’ eventually began to grow on me, and I started to realise what the track was all about.
While on face value, the track appears to be a rather fantastical story about a young man’s dream of stardom, the track is rather autobiographical, showcasing Ben Folds’ choice to eschew the army in favour of becoming a musician. While his previous band did indeed break up, only to reform without him, it appears that Folds had the last laugh, becoming a hugely successful musician while his old bandmates have (mostly) tangled with obscurity ever since.
While ‘Army’ might not be the most palatable track on first listen, if you give it a few shots and start to really listen to what’s being said, it might just become a favourite for you in no time as well.
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