Oops, Did I Break That Too: Reflections on American Fragility Against the Backdrop of Symphonic Ben Folds
Written and Photographed by Colin LaVaute
As has been evidenced in the 50th episode of the Big Muddy Music Hour in which Ben Folds was the guest or my most recent blog on his performance at the Stifel Theater in 2023, I have been a long-time, unabashed fan of his sardonic nuance and musical mastery.
The timing of his return to the Show-Me State could not have been more fortuitous for many reasons. For one, his performance with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra took place only weeks after he had resigned from his post as advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. after Donald Trump announced his overtaking of the national cultural establishment.
Perhaps the most fortuitous aspect of the timing was the scheduled appearance of Ben’s music, which was the centerpiece of the LaVa Girls’ School of Rock lineup only a week before this performance. For those new to this blog, my daughters have been walking through rock n’ roll history every time I drive them to school in the morning. Week by week, I have shared a new artist; from these interactions, some truly special events have taken place in their lives. Whether by interaction with the likes of Incubus or Weezer, Ava and Daisy have already had a wealth of indelible experiences that have inspired them on their musical journey. Only this last Monday night, the girls made headlines with their own musical set at Cooper’s Landing.
All being said, I was having difficulty getting the entire family on board to head to KC to see Ben and the symphony. The girls had played a show on a school night only the night before; now, I was trying to drag everyone to KC for Ben’s show the next. What kind of musical monster am I? Understandably, Ava wanted to rest, but Daisy, my youngest, was more than willing to make the two-hour trip with me on a daddy-daughter date that we won’t soon forget.
It was my first time at the Kaufman Center. I don’t have the architectural knowledge or vocabulary to describe the space, but it is one of the most unique and beautifully designed venues I’ve ever found myself at.
As Ben took the stage, he opened with a track I had yet to hear, the opener from his most recent album, What Matters Most. The song, “But Wait, There’s More,” had Folds relinquish his piano playing duties as he sang with the orchestra swelling behind him. The lyrics from this song and others that I’ll note bore an unfortunate weight as he delivered them. “What used to be extreme is now a bore / That freakshow in the landscaping parking lot / Was oh-so-funny, but now it’s not / Wait, there’s more / Did we really think that we’d go back to normal / Did we ever think we could cut that cord / ‘Cause look who’s coming back, coming back for more.” Hearing Folds’ songs backed by an orchestra took his prose and melodies to soaring heights.
These days, Ben Folds has more fully embraced his role as a storyteller during his live shows, sharing intimate knowledge about each song and how it came to be. Two songs in particular (also from his latest release) stood out.
The Kansas City Symphony Orchestra
“Kristine From the Seventh Grade” is an ode to those past public school acquaintances that have seemed to creep back into our lives in the past decade. Not to catch up on what is happening in your life, but to share emails laden with conspiracy theories and detachment from reality itself. While funny, the song becomes increasingly heartbreaking every time I hear it.
“The anger, the all caps / And all the pseudoscience / The misspellings, they must be on purpose / We went to a good school, Kristine / So what would you imagine I might / Take from this deluge of memes / With the cryptic, dark Bible quotes / Guns, and dead fetuses / Seriously, Kristine, are you okay?”
Another track from What Matters Most cut like a knife later in the set. On “Fragile,” Folds shared the story of how the song came to be. During the pandemic, Ben taught virtual songwriting lessons. He challenged the students and himself to write a song based on a story they had found in the news. Ben tasked his students with picking the story he would write about, and they chose an article about a unique burglary. A couple came home to find their house had been broken into and came face-to-face with the perpetrator, catching him in the act. Rather than running off or physically causing harm to the couple, the burglar instead broke down crying, gave them $250 to pay for damages, and then left shrouded in shame with no riches to show for his incursion.
How Folds takes this somewhat humorous story and turns it into a song that finds ulterior meaning is indicative of how masterful his songwriting is. Folds uses the idea of the burglar as a metaphor for people in our lives who cause harm but somehow always make themselves out to be the victim. “You’re only sorry when you get called out… There’s something so fragile about you / It’s like ‘crash, boom, oops. Did I break that, too?’”
While it is easy to think about the song in terms of what I believe is Folds’ original intent (interpersonal relationships), hearing the song in the context of Folds’ decision to leave his role at the Kennedy Center and the current cultural turbulence we are experiencing in the US made me reflect on the fragile nature of our nation itself. Self-victimization is seemingly exalted in our modern society. Our leaders pose as authoritarian strongmen with an inflated sense of faux machismo while also barraging the public with a never-ending stream of grievances aimed at letting us all know just how awfully they’ve been treated. Poor them. All of the “Kristines” in our lives post photos of homeless people and believe the Big Lie to justify the notion that their way of life as a white, middle-class person is under attack. To sarcastically quote another one of Folds’ songs, “Y’all don’t know what it’s like / Being male, middle class, and white.”
Daisy and I left during intermission. It was a school night, after all. As she soundly slept, I was left with the same anxious reflections on the state of this great nation of ours. The Victimization Nation that voted to put us on our current path is starting to freak out increasingly each day. Veterans are losing jobs by the thousands. Parents who are rightfully fearing their children may lose their healthcare. Retirees are not getting their social security checks on time after paying into the system their entire lives. I imagine them saying…
“Crash, boom, oops, did I break that, too?”
Yeah, it kinda seems like they did.