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Ben Folds to release academic a capellas
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 16 April 2009
Chief CMU favourite Ben Folds has announced that he is preparing to release an album of a capella versions of some of his songs recorded by university choirs. The album, entitled ‘Ben Folds Presents: University A Capella!’, will feature 14 songs, including ‘Brick’, ‘Magic’, ‘Evaporated’ and ‘Army’, performed by choirs from around the US, as well as his own instrument-less versions of ‘Boxing’ and ‘Effington’.
Apparently Folds discovered that university choirs were posting a capella performances of his songs on YouTube and decided to pick some of the best to be recorded for the album, which he produced in between gigs on his 2008 tour to promote his ‘Way To Normal’ album.
Folds told Billboard that his songs “are definitely built for” being performed like this. “My songs have all the things you’d hope they’d have, because they’re classically structured”, he said. “It’s pop music, but they’re built to be interesting in their voicing and chord changes. They’re kind of made for elaborate arrangements, so it makes sense to me they would appeal to these [groups]”.
He added: “I’m a songwriter first, and yet I’ve never really been covered. In a funny way, I still always think of the [recordings], when I do them, like demos. I figure they’re going to be covered by somebody important one day. So of course I was thrilled. I got to hear the songs actually take flight. These are the songs doing what they’re supposed to do”.
Folds is also getting ready to begin work on another album which, as previously reported, will see the musician soundtrack lyrics written by author Nick Hornby. “I write around his lyrics, which I do easily ’cause he’s written these great lyrics”, says Folds. “Right now we’re up to 18 [songs] that I think are really good, but I think he’ll be inspired when he starts hearing them finished and will start to write some more – like a creative second wind or something”.
