I do love "Annie Waits." I had an interesting moment of rediscovery with that song, too; it had been on my iTunes list for months, mostly because Lisa had insisted that we include some songs from Rocking the Suburbs in the playlist for our first party at Senior House. (The sticker for that CD, you may remember, lived on the inside of our front door for months afterward. After graduation, I asked Bessie, who was occupying Senior House at the time, to paste that sticker on an index card and mail it to me. I'm so sickeningly sentimental.) Anyway, it wasn't until early last year that the song really got to me, possibly because I began to associate it with…well, a girl named Annie. But what I really like about it is how the point of view changes in the last verse; you think the song is being sung by an omniscent narrator describing Annie's situation, when in fact it's being sung by a very specific narrator who is watching Annie from a distance, presumably while sitting at the bar in the same depressing dive, and bemoaning the fact that Annie waits…but not for him.

Ben Folds is very, very good.