Song Series: "Sentimental Guy" by Ben Folds

This song comes from Ben Folds' solo album Songs for Silverman, which was released in 2005. The album itself is very good, as its songs loosely tell the story of a man's life. It begins with an old man having a "paradigm arrest" as Ben puts it, and goes on to describe adolescence & growing up. Then, the album features a look at religion, love and loss and new love, fathering a child, the death of a friend, nostalgia, and it finally points to the end of the man's life. It really contains palpable emotion conveyed through Ben's usual quirky and ironic sense of humor, although this one is a little more serious.

Sentimental Guy -- click the preceding to hear the song -- is most obviously about the ways age can affect or even limit our sentimentality. Lyrics are available here.

It is clear that the main character of the song is far removed in time from one of his past lives, perhaps childhood. The death of an individual or individuals from this past life brings about reflection. This may be an actual death, but I like to read deeper and think of it as the death of their relationship to the main character. The relationship certainly occurred early in his development, as he sings, "Little things you said or did are part of me, come out from time to time/Probably no one I know now would notice."

Thematically, the song is about nostalgia. The chorus is probably the most simple and yet most effective (isn't it always?) of the entire album. It is a one line lyric: "I never thought so much could change," and it blends into a piano melody that can only be described as nostalgic in my mind. The melody also refers to the way Ben sings "... I used to be a sentimental guy" in other parts of the song. These interpretations are confirmed near the end of the song with the final verse.

The last verse tells us what the main character is doing, where he is, and why he's singing this song. "People talkin' and I'm watching/As flashes of their faces go black and white/And fade to yellow in a box in an attic". Sitting in the attic looking at old pictures is pretty far from unsentimental. His lament that it's a shame he doesn't miss anyone or anything seems to me to be a function of necessity. That life has faded to yellow, and while nostalgia can be very good, it can also hold you back if you are unable to let go.

This song presents some difficult truths about growing up, and yet it never takes from me that life-is-beautiful feeling I always have. There is certainly a desensitized feeling about certain things that can come with the experience of age. However, there are ways to maintain that sentimentality, and even the main character here does it. The awareness itself is sentimental and that is displayed through the simple fact of singing the song. More importantly, there is the warning that he is haunted by the "left unsaid". I think we all have things we think and do not say. The danger here is if we fail to say those things during the times in which we possess the sentimentality to say them, we may lose the chance or the ability to do so forever. Someone kind enough to give us that heads up sounds like a pretty sentimental guy to me.