Hold up! Before you read on, please read this...

This post was published more than 13 years ago

I keep old posts on the site because I often enjoy reading old content on other people's sites. Not everything that is old is bad. It can be interesting to see how views have changed over time: for example, how my strident teenage views have mellowed and matured.

But given the age of this post, please bear in mind:

• My views might very well have changed in the 13 years since I wrote this post. I have written some very silly things over the years, many of which I find pretty embarrassing today.
• This post might use language in ways which I would now consider highly inappropriate or offensive.
• Factual information might be outdated.
• Links might be broken; embedded material might not appear properly.

Okay. Consider yourself duly warned. Read on...

I must thank Tom Reynolds for his Guardian piece which reunited me with the almost fatally depressing ‘Brick’ by Ben Folds Five. I can’t think why I’ve come across it before, but I have, and it still retains the same sense of hopeless tragedy that it did the first time I heard it. But then, I guess it’s difficult to write a cheery song about getting an abortion.

Here’s what Mr Reynolds had to say about it (complete with corrections presumably added after he wrote the original):

(NB: Many listeners, including me, first assumed Brick was about a relationship ending. We discovered later that it’s about a couple getting an abortion. The following is based on the first scenario. Therefore it’s all wrong.) A gloomy piano-and-voice song about a couple breaking up (wrong), Brick tells of a guy who picks up his girlfriend, bitches, takes her someplace, bitches, waits for her, bitches, then brings her back home, referring to her as a “brick” (this is true). We never learn what’s transpired in between (this is wrong). All that’s certain is the couple wants to split up (this is wrong). Brick offers the same pleasure that comes with dropping one on your foot (this is really true).

He only rates it as number 13 in the most depressing songs ever. I think it’s far worse than that.