Down the tracks
beautiful McMansions on a hill
that overlook a highway
with riverboat casinos and you still
have yet to see a soul
Alt-rock with a piano- It's a miracle. Ben Folds wishes the Bible Belt took the words of Jesus more seriously in this beautiful piece of melancholy.
Newfoundland reader and writer Danny MacEachern defended this song to me:
Ben Folds' music is decidedly personal, so any songs of his that qualify for this list unsurprisingly tackle social problems through the eyes of an individual, like the father raging against overconsumption in "All You Can Eat." in "Jesusland," the (possibly homeless) narrator in what seems to be the U.S. Bible belt appears almost defeated by the hypocrisy he sees in the gulf between Christian values in theory and Christian values in practice. "They drop your name but no one knows your face," he sings, lamenting the emptiness of a supposed community, despite all its McMansions. Still, he wants you to pray for Jesusland.
