Rockin' The Suburbs

• United States: September 11, 2001
• Australia: September 10, 2001
• United Kingdom: September 24, 2001
• Japan Release: September 13, 2001

Track List:

1. Annie Waits
2. Zak & Sara
3. Still Fighting It
4. Gone
5. Fred Jones Pt. 2
6. The Ascent of Stan
7. Losing Lisa
8. Carrying Cathy
9. Not the Same
10. Rockin' the Suburbs
11. Fired
12. The Luckiest

• Hiro's Song (extra song at track 10, Japanese release only)

The Singles:

Australian Single
1. Rockin' The Suburbs
2. One Down
3. The Secret Life of Morgan Davis

UK Single (Part 1)
1. Rockin' The Suburbs (radio edit)
2. Girl
3. Make Me Mommy
4. Rockin' The Suburbs (Enhanced CD music video "clean" version)

UK Single (Part 2)
1. Rockin' The Suburbs
2. One Down
3. The Secret Life of Morgan Davis
4. Rockin' The Suburbs (Enhanced CD music video full version)

Music Videos:

• Rockin' the Suburbs (July 2001)
• Still Fighting It (November 2001)

Ben Folds introduces the song on piano: Cold Live at the Chapel, December 23, 2001:
This song was written for guitar and drum machine and, uh, ProTools. ProTools is the computer that everyone uses to make records on now. And I've never really tried it on the piano. It sounds like a gospel song on the piano, but it's the current radio single, so I have to play it. But it's probably going to be really good. You can clap on two and four if you want to, that's the off beats. And one and three are the downbeats, you don't have to clap on those.

After the song:
Nice two and four. If I closed my eyes I would have never known; you're all white people.

Ben Folds introduces the song on piano: Roseland Ballroom, June 13, 2002:
Thank you. Thank you. This song was originally entitled "Korn Sucks". audience laughs The reason isn't because the band sucks, they're probably great. audience laughs We played a show with this band, Korn, somewhere in Japan. And apparently, they were heckling us. I don't actually remember hearing anybody, but this is what they said. And so, a couple of years ago, I saw Spin Magazine on the shelf at a grocery store, and it had "Korn" on the front and it said "Korn takes on the wusses." And I thought "Oh, cool," so I bought it. audience laughs And I open it up and there's this picture of Johnathan What-his-name and there's this big quote that says "Ben Folds Five are fucking pussies." audience laughs even harder I thought it was cool! It was good publicity. It's probably the last time you'll see my name in Spin Magazine, anyway. So I'll just take what I could get.

Folds originally wanted Fred Durst to direct the video. For money issues, that plan fell through. However this was not that much of a loss, as one of the best satire musicians, Weird Al, was finally selected to direct.

If you'd like you can download the video in either AVI format (3 MB) or MPEG format (41 MB very high quality) from Kyle's FTP server (which is open to all fans):

Host Address:  24.124.73.243
Port:          21
User ID:       benfolds
Password:      Piano

Complete piano transcriptions:
http://www.benfolds.ws (Shut down by Hal Leonard, rights owner to Ben Folds transcriptions.)

An addendum to the trivia note above from the Rockin' the Suburbs tour:

It was kickass...

Before playing Rockin' the Suburbs, Ben explained his inspiration. In a 1998 issue of Spin magazine, KoRn had affirmed that 'Ben Folds Five sucks. It's Cheers music.' Ben had picked up the magazine in an airport and was pissed. 'Whatever, they can't even spell corn right,' says Ben. heh heh...

So Ben devised a song lambasting KoRn, but realized that it probably 'wouldn't have a very long shelf-life' if released in the heat of the moment. What was delivered three years later, and 'more fleshed out' was Rockin' the Suburbs...

So now you have it, straight from Mr. Ben.