Is Ben Folds’ “Phone In A Pool” Perfect?

Today, Ben Folds (a long-time musical inspiration of mine) released a new song exclusively on The Wall Street Journal’s “Speakeasy” site called “Phone in a Pool”. It’s a song about how he, well, threw his phone into a pool.

The song will be on his new album, “So there,” which he wrote with New York City chamber orchestra yMusic which is due out September 11th on New West Records.

However…

Tally Hall fan Allegra first pointed out that there are some similarities between this song and Rob Cantor’s song “Perfect”, which we all know had a music video which went viral just over a year ago. Rob and fellow-Tally Andrew Horowitz co-wrote the song and put together said video where Rob pretended to do 29 celebrity impressions during a low-fi, in-house performance of their song. A week later, Rob revealed it was a hoax and showed the behind-the-scenes footage of everyone who helped him put together this captivating video.

In the hours since posting this on HITS’ Facebook and Twitter, there’s been some noticeable agreement in the notion that these tunes are a bit more similar than you might expect.

You can listen to Ben’s song on The Wall Street Journal right now.

Then listen to “Perfect” below:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/133460627″ params=”color=ff9900&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

I’m not saying Rob should sue. But I think he would have a case if he decided to.

What do YOU think?

UPDATE 11/29/15:
A fan tweeted about the similarities to Ben and he replied. Ben pointed out the origins of his song dated back to 2012. He then followed up by saying “It’s a pretty common chord progression.More about what it’s carrying. I’ll look up Mr Cantor soon.”

2 thoughts on “Is Ben Folds’ “Phone In A Pool” Perfect?

  • July 14, 2015 at 7:44 am
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    There are definite similarities, but it may be a common enough chord progression to be coincidence. After all, my brother pointed out to me that “Perfect” is quite similar to “Suicide Life” by The Eels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXdM–CGKyA

    However, as both a Ben Folds and Rob Cantor Fan, I can say one thing for certain. “Perfect” is without a doubt a much better song than “Phone in a Pool.”

    Reply
    • July 14, 2015 at 12:01 pm
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      Thanks for the comment! Yeah, there’s definitely almost as much similarity to Suicide Life as well.

      Reply

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