Whatever and ever, amen…
[Video][Website]
[4.00]
Alfred Soto: During the dot.com days I nodded when friends praised this earnest fellow’s songcraft, especially at the expense of what was obviously the apex of a Billboard chartpop moment. Many years later he still does those adrenalized piano trills while foregoing the chance to insert anything hinting at subversion. Who needs talk-singing in 2012?
[4]
Brad Shoup: Poor Robert Sledge, stuck augmenting Folds’ slaphappy saloon barreling with oompah bass. Folds spends most of the song in genial life-coach mode until he suddenly shoots for an urgent medium with a lil’ emo screaming. He’d be the first to tell you that people change, and that he can’t keep cranking out sketches of North Carolina hipsters waking up at noon. But surely something’s happening in his neighborhood?
[5]
Edward Okulicz: I can’t shake the feeling that this song is going to appeal to those who liked “Song For The Dumped” for its novelty value, rather than the cleverly bitter song lurking underneath. No such smart pop song is hiding in “Do It Anyway,” though the lyric “And if you’re paralyzed by a voice in your head/It’s the standing still that should be scaring you instead” suggests the smarts aren’t completely exhausted. But this is no more compositionally interesting than one of the goof-offs off their outtakes record back in the ’90s.
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: Fuzz bass and hyperactive piano, that is, it’s Ben Folds Five. “Do It Anyway” has neither the unbridled boisterousness nor the sentimentality that made this group’s songs something more. Dunno what’s the deal with those fake muppets in the video, either.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: It’s tough to knock a song set on capturing the sonic equivalent of shrugging your shoulders and saying “meh” to pretty much everything that manages to do just that, save for a few over-dramatic yelps of “OK.” It’s also tough to work up the energy to say anything positive about this either.
[5]
Iain Mew: Too thin and too long, but I can’t dislike anything with an “oh-KAAAAY!!” roar like that.
[5]
Anthony Easton: That I found Ben Folds inspirational during my high school years is an indication of how incredibly shitty high school was for me. Maybe Dan Savage was right: it got better, and so I no longer need his smugness and his fourth rate attempt at ripping off third rate cocktail lounge pianists ripping off the worst sentimental edges of Elton John’s worst work, but with less enchanting vocals.
[1]
Jonathan Bogart: The smugness of a former self-perceived outcast who’s since made a lot of money and is entering a comfortable middle age secure in the belief that everyone wants to hear his message of glib self-help optimism knows no bounds. But enough about Chris Hardwick.
[3]