Philosophy by Ben Folds Five

Philosophy is a song Ben Folds wrote for Ben Folds Five, the piano, bass and drums trio he formed with bassist Robert Sledge and drummer Darren Jessee. It is the second track on the band's self-titled debut album, released by Passenger Records, a Caroline Records label, in 1995. A radio edit came out as a European single in 1996, and Folds still plays the song on his solo tours.

The band recorded the album in February 1995 at Wave Castle in North Carolina with producer Caleb Southern, a friend Folds later called the fourth member of the group. The whole record was made in four days, with Folds on piano and lead vocals, Sledge on bass and Jessee on drums and tambourine, and Sledge and Jessee also sang backup. Marc Becker mixed it. There are no guitars on the album. Sledge often ran his bass through fuzz, which filled the space a guitar would usually take, and the stacked backing vocals of the three members did much of the rest.

The four day session was the band's second try at the album. Caroline had given the group a budget of about $14,000, and the first attempt used it on a three week session in Philadelphia with producer Dave Stiff Johnson. Those recordings were shelved. Folds said years later that the result did not feel like the band and was not crazy like the album people came to know. The trio went back to North Carolina and started over with Southern.

The shelved Philadelphia tapes stayed in Folds' archives for more than three decades. He found them again and had them remastered, and in August 2026 he released Philosophy (Shelved First Attempt) as a preview of a 30th anniversary edition of the debut. That reissue, from Capitol and UMe, came out on September 4, 2026, as a two disc set. One disc holds the remastered original album. The other holds the shelved first attempt, with early versions of seven album songs, an early take of the song that became Evaporated on the 1997 album Whatever and Ever Amen, and three outtakes. In his new liner notes, Folds wrote that the record was not the kind anyone would produce today, and that its rough character probably limited its commercial appeal.

On Philosophy, Folds plays loud piano through the verses while Sledge and Jessee play under him, and all three sing on the choruses. The song ends with a piano solo, and partway through it Folds slips into a melody line from George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, the 1924 piece for piano and jazz band. The album version runs 4:36, and the radio edit cut it to 3:48. The song's key and tempo are listed on the Song IQ page for Philosophy.

Folds has not explained the lyrics. When the band put out the rarities collection Naked Baby Photos in 1998, the liner notes offered a joke instead of an answer, claiming the song was about Folds' penis if that was what a listener already believed. Fans have floated other theories, some about an architect and some about the Statue of Liberty, and none has been confirmed.

Folds wrote about the idea behind the title in his 2019 memoir, A Dream About Lightning Bugs, in a chapter called Creative Visualization or Useful Delusion. There he describes a state he falls into now and then, one that starts with picturing a goal that seems out of reach as if it were already done. He argues that a short spell of delusion is what drives a person to make the picture real, whether the goal is building a house, writing a movie or running a marathon.

The 1996 European single came out on Intercord Records for Passenger and Caroline. Alongside the radio edit it carried two live tracks, Tom & Mary and Emaline, taped on August 12, 1995, at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. John Alagia and Doug Derryberry recorded the show, and the tracks were mixed in May 1996 at Rutabaga Studios in Arlington, Virginia. Tom & Mary also turned up as a bonus track on the Japanese release of the album. The album itself did well abroad, reaching No. 37 in Australia and No. 72 in Japan, where it was certified gold.

Several live versions of Philosophy have been released. One appeared on Modern Rock Live, Volume 1, a 1996 promotional set Sony sold only with its CD players. Another, taped at de Melkweg in Amsterdam on March 18, 1997, went onto Naked Baby Photos. The band also played it in New York on June 9, 1997, for the PBS series Sessions at West 54th, and that performance later came out on DVD. A montage of concert footage from Georgetown University's Gaston Hall, Cabaret Metro in Chicago and shows in Australia appeared on Spare Reels, a video included with a limited edition of the 1999 album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner.

After the band split up, Folds kept the song going on his own. During his Ben Folds and a Piano tour he played it at the Moore Theatre in Seattle on March 20, 2002, and worked in a piece of Misirlou, the surf rock instrumental Dick Dale recorded. That version was released on Ben Folds Live in 2003. Two years later he recorded an in studio take for the download only album iTunes Originals – Ben Folds.

The original trio has since announced plans to perform together again for the first time in more than 13 years.