Day After Day #102: Song for the Dumped

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

Song for the Dumped (1997)

I've always leaned towards guitar-driven music, but it's not the be-all, end-all for me. Give me a good song and the rest falls into place. It was that way with the Ben Folds Five, who burst onto the rock scene in the late '90s with a guitar-free, piano-led album of rollicking, quirky songs that perfectly fit that time and space.

"Song for the Dumped" was the song I first heard by the BFF, getting lots of airplay on WFNX and creating some buzz. Weirdly enough, it wasn't the first single released from the band's 1997 album Whatever and Ever Amen; that was "Battle of Who Could Care Less." But "Song for the Dumped" was an uptempo power pop banger with the refrain "Give me back my money, bitch," so I'm guessing that caught the ear of radio programmers.   

It's a pissed-off breakup song, but it's also cathartic and a lot of fun.

"So you wanted/To take a break/Slow it down some and/Have some space/Well, fuck you too/Give me my money back/Give me my money back/You bitch/I want my money back/And don't forget to give me back my black t-shirt."

Folds' piano is the lead instrument here, but I can't say enough about Robert Sledge on fuzz bass who really kicks ass and drummer Darren Jessee; both men provide excellent backing vocals as well. 

The song is obviously relatable for anyone who's been dumped. I think if it had come out a year earlier, it would have hit home even harder for me because I was still stinging from a breakup. In early '97, I was actually in a good place, but man, is this song entertaining as hell.

"I wish I hadn't bought you/Dinner/Right before you dumped me/On your front porch."

The song was released as the fifth single from the album in 1998, but the big hit was the fourth single, "Brick," a slow song Folds wrote about his high school girlfriend getting an abortion. It's a great song and got a ton of radio airplay; it's probably the band's biggest song and a huge departure from the rest of the album.

As for "Song for the Dumped," I just discovered in researching the song that an early version of it appeared on the soundtrack of the terrible Ellen DeGeneres movie "Mr. Wrong," which came out in 1996...a year before DeGeneres famously came out as a lesbian on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The movie was about a single woman looking for a husband and by all accounts was bad, but somehow "Song for the Dumped" found its way onto the soundtrack despite never actually getting played in the movie.

Ben Folds Five released one more album, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, in 1999 before splitting up a year later. Folds went on to a solo career, produced and arranged William Shatner's album Has Been, contributed to soundtracks and played in The Bens with Ben Lee and Ben Kweller. Sledge played in the bands International Orange and Surrender Human, while Jessee formed the band Hotel Lights. The BFF reunited a few times before releasing The Sound of the Life of the Mind in 2012 and touring, but they appear to be done for now.