Why I Leaked It: Ben Folds Comes Clean About His Fake (And Real) New Album, "Way To Normal"

"Brainwashed"
Real: " 'Brainwashed' on the record is actually a response to someone I know writing an extremely judgmental and mean song about me. I wrote this song back suggesting we have a dance-off. It's just silly. It's actually sillier than the fake one."

Fake: "We thought it be funny to think, 'How would a 13-year-old write that song?' If you've been brainwashed then you'll know all about how it feels to be messed with until your insides fall out. My drummer wrote those lyrics. I sat down, I found a riff, he sang the lyrics over the riff and it was done in about 45 minutes. We've got it on video, it's just us laughing the whole time."

"Way To Normal"
Real: "The album is called Way To Normal, there is no real song called that."
Fake: "I thought if we're writing really bad songs, we got to have a 'way to normal' theme song and it has to be slightly, half-assedly political. It's about saving the starving children and how it's not the president's fault. When Sam writes bad lyrics, to me they're funny and I forgive him. When I write the bad lyrics they're really bad 'cause they sound real somehow. The line that I had trouble singing without laughing was 'All these corporations poisoning our air/the children are angry and hungry and they don't even care.' Something like, let's get this thing together, people, before we don't have a planet at all or something. I'd like to write for South Park."

"Lovesick Diagnostician"
Real: "That real version is titled 'Dr. Yang.' On the record I was thinking, 'I'm really not a big fan of the doctor songs like, 'I went to the doctor with my problems and he couldn't solve my problem.' And so I thought, 'It seems like everyone that's got a problem goes to about five different doctors now and they're all like eastern doctors and chiropractors and a psychic.' We're pretty self-obsessed, so that's what the real one's about."

Fake: "When I wrote the lyrics it thought it'd be funny if ultimately he was going to the doctor so he would call his girlfriend for him, supposedly because his number's been blocked and she's got a restraining order against him. So that's what that means, Could you call my girlfriend from your phone number and tell her I'm going to kill myself if she doesn't come back?"