Top 73 Quotes & Sayings by Ben Folds
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Ben Folds.
Last updated on December 25, 2024.
My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that's the right song to not fight the lyric.
Now that I have found someone, I'm feeling more alone... than I ever have before.
The way I see it, there's only one melody for any song.
The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We're growing old. It's getting late.
In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.
Even though I live in America more, I feel like when I go to Adelaide, that's when I get to go home.
The press is like any business. It's a group of really intelligent individuals that ends up being one slathering, one-eyed, drooling monster.
The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.
Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good.
You never know when you put out an album that's unique whether it'll get beat up for it or not.
I'm aware that I'm very fringe, and it's nice that way.
A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they've seen everything.
I'm really good at writing 'almost hits'.
With the a cappella groups, every voice is like one string on a guitar, one note on the piano, or one cymbal, and you don't have the luxury of falling back on anything.
I'm older than I was, and I'm still washed-up, and I haven't changed my music one iota. It's just much easier to do this when people are being nice to you.
Everyone, when you're a teenager and you're growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it's not.
Rock and roll is - and should be - a kid's place.
Maybe this is wrong, but I feel like I craft my songs carefully enough that I still find that fifteen years after having written one, it still works for me - I'm not cringing.
But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that's the center of it, that is it. It's almost like there's something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you're a songwriter that sings your material.
I do have that mindset - that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.
It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.
Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.
I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.
Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there's a lot of subtlety. That's what I'm proud of.
Everybody knows it hurts to grow up... and we're still fighting it.
Next door, there's an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.
There is still some art in pop music. But it can't happen if you're not inspired.
I'm not really a strange person or anything, so if there's music I like, usually there's other people who like it too.
My idea is to play with the people who you know want to get it right. Then it's fun and easy to record, and you can get down to details, like taking out cymbals so the verse doesn't dwarf the chorus, something like that.
The nature of honesty is that if someone has information or knows something about you that you don't want heard, then they have power over you.
People learn at the rate they are going to learn.
I'm romantically inclined. No human being on Earth is not attracted to other people. There is no fairy tale that they only have eyes for you. You just choose to act on it or not.
Notes don't make music until you learn to insert silence between them.
My parents told me I must get married. I was seen as a failure if I didn't do it.
The music business is a weird business. Sometimes licensing doesn't happen because some business component that you never knew about stops it.
I do think that when you make repeated mistakes, it's usually because you're just not coming to grips with something.
If you're afraid they might discover your redneck past, there are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past.
I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.
If the melody is telling me this is what the song is about, then I'm sort of forced into confession, autobiography or fantasy. If I don't do that, I've hamstrung the melody.
The cruelest lies are often told without a word
The kindest truths are often spoken, never heard
The nice thing about age is worrying less and less about what people think.
If I'm in a relationship and my girlfriend is sleeping with other people, I don't need to know who it is; I just want to know how she feels about it.
I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest so I can be for you what you want to see.
When someone really goes to tell you something about what they're thinking, they're going to wear that experience with them. That's what you have to share.
And all I really want to say is you're the reason I want to stay.
Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere
Everything I write is personal, really. Even when I'm sarcastic, it's quite personal. And on this record, from the production to the singing to the performances, I got it really honest. To the modern ear, it seems soft. When you hear it against other things, it seems vulnerable. Lyrically and musically, though, this is more subtle. And, yes, it's asking a lot of someone who's used to being hit over the head with bright neon to listen to this.
I feel like a quote out of context.
I don't leave my neighborhood. I don't go anywhere. There are four blocks I live in and there are two coffee shops, one at each end of the block... so I don't do much driving... Some people would say they never see me because I don't go anywhere. I stay in the blue state of Nashville, in my bubble.
The piano is just a different animal. It's expensive, it's big, it's heavy, and it doesn't fit in the mix easily. Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible - it wasn't an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.
Everybody knows it hurts to grow up...and we're still fighting it.
I've gotten to the point where I realize that I need to tell my truth in music and not walk around blabbing my mind.
I could probably live in Bali the rest of my life and completely live in the sticks and have a f - king moped and make a record every couple of years and not step in public and break even like I do anyway. That's really tempting.
If you can't draw a crowd, draw dicks on the wall
The press is like any business. Its a group of really intelligent individuals that ends up being one slathering, one-eyed, drooling monster.
Im really good at writing almost hits.
Being capable of anything is a bullshit concept, unless it means you also admit that you're capable of cheating, lying and killing.
White people don't sing together very often, and when they do, it's about the celebrity of the song. The singing at my shows is all about harmony.
What stupid f - king idiot gets married a second time if the first time didn't work out?
The less I talk in bars, write emails, express myself in an emotionally lewd way outside of my songwriting, the more I have to do it through my music.
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