“Brick” by Ben Folds Five

"Brick" is the quiet one on Ben Folds Five's 1997 album Whatever and Ever Amen, and it became one of the trio's biggest hits, all over mainstream radio in the US, the UK and Australia after it went out as a single late that year. It trades the band's usual smart-aleck bounce for something heavy and hushed. Ben Folds wrote the verses from his own life, about going with his high school girlfriend when she had an abortion and what it did to the two of them afterward, and drummer Darren Jessee wrote the chorus.

The arrangement stays out of the story's way. Folds's piano rolls slow and steady, with a little electric piano and melodica shading the edges; Robert Sledge moves between bass guitar and double bass; Jessee keeps the drums soft; and Caleb Southern, who produced and recorded it with Folds, lays a low Hammond organ haze underneath. Andy Wallace mixed it, and the whole thing sounds like a gray winter afternoon with the heat turned off.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.