Nick Hornby and Ben Folds Collaborate!

November 28, 2008

[Ben Folds pic by deovolenti]

Through a chain of circumstances too complicated to recount, I discovered a Paper Cuts Blog playlist by Nick Hornby, perpetual resident on my “reliable favorite authors” shortlist, in which he alluded to collaborating with a favorite musician of mine: Ben Folds:

4) Jen and Justin, Ben Folds. You can’t hear this song at the moment, and I’m hoping you never will. … One of my side-projects this year (and it’s been more fun than I want to admit) is to attempt lyrics for Ben Folds’s next album, and even if nothing comes of it, I have learned more about the craft of songwriting from the e-mails I’ve been getting than from just about anything I’ve ever read. Most of the time I’ve been sending over words that he’s going to try to set to music; occasionally we’re working the other way around, and I’ll try to fit a lyric to an existing melody. This tune has one of Folds’s most heart-melting choruses, which, considering his melodic gifts, means it’s as pretty as a pop song can be.

I do hope to hear some of these songs. A bit of searching and I ended up at Hornby’s blog (I had no idea he had one!), where he confirmed that the collaboration continued:

…I’m writing the lyrics for a Ben Folds album, which he’s recording in Dublin in December. I wasn’t going to mention this, on the presumption that it will never happen, but my writing partner seems confident enough to have talked about it already, and if he thinks something will come of it, then (deep breath) so do I.

Hornby goes on to answer those who might wonder why Folds wants anyone to write lyrics for his next album:

Ben, as you may know, is quite capable of writing his own lyrics, but I think he fancied a rest, and anyway he, like me, wants to have as much fun as he can in his chosen medium while there’s still fun to be had. Ben got in touch after I’d written about Smoke in 31 Songs/Songbook, which is how I ended up contributing a song to ‘Has Been’, the mad and great William Shatner album he produced.

I’ve never heard of Songbook, but after a quick perusal it went right on my “must get ASAP” list– Hornby writing from the heart on music is second only to Hornby writing about books (am I the only one who read The Believer primarily for Hornby’s– and the Polysyllabic Spree’s– “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column?).

Tags: ben folds, Music, nick hornby, writers