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Ben dunks phone, writes song about it

caustic_light_200iPhone at the bottom of the pool? “My contacts! My photos! Did I have insurance???” Oops.

Unless you’re Ben Folds, in which case it’s an opportunity.

Keeping in the same vein as Hiroshima (B-B-B-Benny Hit His Head), Ben has taken another self-inflicted misfortune and written about it in song. This time, he chronicles the drowned cellphone in a track aptly titled (what else) Phone in a Pool, which can be heard on the upcoming album So There, due out September 11. The song tells the story about an incident where he tossed his phone in a hotel pool in a fit of frustration (not unlike the little boy tossing his phone in the Nationwide Insurance commercial, coincidentally set to Ben’s song You Don’t Know Me). As the story is told, the pop singer Kesha just happened to be at the same hotel and, whereupon witnessing the phone toss, dived fully-clothed into the water and rescued it (perhaps to honor and/or forgive Ben for his references to her work). As the song goes, drying the phone in rice, as Kesha suggested, didn’t work and Folds, also an accomplished photographer, lost several pictures he had taken.

Phone has been released as a preview track on the Wall Street Journal music site Speakeasy, similar to how Capable of Anything appeared last month.

Image: fdecomite / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

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