Landed

So I've reduced the 42 down to 8!

First up is "Landed", a comparatively "new" song from Ben Fold's 2005 album Songs for Silverman.

I had flirted with his music when he was in the Ben Folds Five (the joke being that there were only three of them).While, therefore, I had the odd track from magazine freebies, it wasn't until he appeared on "Friday night with Jonathan Ross" playing  a live version of this song that I sat up and paid attention. His appearance on the show was to promote the album and it worked as I went out and bought the "deluxe CD version" of the album, which contains the CD, and a "making of DVD" all beautifully bound in a 40 page booklet!

It's a song that firstly shows off  Folds piano playing skills. In that respect he's got the ability of Elton John, Jamie Cullum or Billy Joel, all great songwriters who are also fantastic musicians, which some times gets overlooked until you see them play live.

Folds is also a great lyricist, which can range from well thought out stories to love songs via angry break up songs to comedy, but they always either make you think, want to hug someone or laugh!. In this case it's a story of a man leaving a love, that has run it's course and more, to fly back "home" to an unnamed  past love (?) who may have written the writer off and asking to be picked up as he's "landed".

I've linked this blog to the Spotify play list which will eventually have all 8 songs on it. This version is the album version, which is also called the "new" version, it is piano, bass and drums. I can't find an old version, but there is a video version of the song on iTunes, which I also own, and that has strings on it and actually it's that version to which the Jonathan Ross version was closer! Doesn't matter both are great.

There is one final aspect to my love for this song that earns it's place in my final eight and that is that it is one of the first songs that I liked and both my sons liked when I played it to them. In fact, Matt my eldest son is probably a bigger fan now than me and went to see him live this February when he played in Southampton. I would have gone but he was treated by his girlfriend, she's a fan too, and there are sometimes you just have to understand that three's a crowd!

You can find the playlist on Spotify here