213. Song No. 3,209: “Fair,” Ben Folds Five
Whatever and Ever Amen, 1997

What I talk about when I talk about second-chance songs has diverged into two categories since this blog began: Primarily and initially, they were the songs that passed me by for years and years until this project showed me what kind of greatness I was missing out on; as time wears on, I realize I’ve been using it more and more often to describe songs I love but have completely forgotten about until alphabetical listening auspiciously reintroduced us. Either way, it’s one of my favorite unexpected phenomena to emerge from 12,700 Songs: There’s something really magical about realizing there have been so many long-passed-by songs just waiting to become newfound loves, and meeting up with forgotten favorites has been one helluva joy, too.

To the latter definition and on a broader scale, it’s rocked me back to all kinds of artists and albums and songs that never really lost their appeal but did pale in comparison to novel offerings that grabbed me by the heart and demanded even more obsessive, infinitely repeated aural consumption. Ben Folds is one I lost along the way but really shouldn’t have because FUCK I love that pintsize, piano-stool-launching and utterly pettable (the payoff of waiting around after the show is the truly random assortment of stories you collect over the years) music man and the gobsmacking range of topics he tackles and songs he creates.

“Fair” hitting my earballs after all this time apart was equal parts homecoming and overdue rediscovery and reunion and awe anew. I’ve loved this song in so many places that once were as intimately familiar as every note of my favorite albums but have long since receded into the distant, dusty past because time is a cruel, thieving mistress.

This is one of those songs whose musical catchiness supercedes everything and distracted from its decidedly bleak lyrics chronicalling the lawless chaos in the aftermath of a volatile relationship’s even more explosive end. There’s car-on-human contact, destroyed dishware, the kind of oubursts exclusive to the end of a relationship, the self-victimization of the emotionally needy, and an entire lyrical expanse detailing just how ill-fated and ill-fiting the romance it pokes at post-mortem really is.

But there’s a sense of closure and release running through it, too, that suits its otherwise incongruously uptempo accompaniment. Some romances die as they live, going out in the spectacular hail of frustrated cacophony born from all that pent-up, unrealized energy never finding its natural and best course. The music of it got me first, but something about its storytelling genuinely tickles the writer in me: Not all stories have a happy ending, clear protagonists or internalized lessons, and not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes two people just make each other miserable for any number of reasons that don’t damn either one to irredeemable depths, and it makes for one helluva character study in just under six minutes.