C major · Camelot 8B · 97 BPM
Philosophy
by Ben Folds Five
- 97
- BPM
- C major
- Key
- 8B
- Camelot
- 37
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Ben Folds wrote "Philosophy" and closed it with a piano solo that borrowed a melody line from George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The track appeared on Ben Folds Five's 1995 self-titled debut album, and Folds went on to play it on tours throughout his solo career. The liner notes for the 1998 compilation album Naked Baby Photos offered a sarcastic note on the song's meaning, claiming it was about Folds' penis, if that was what anyone thought it was about.
In his 2019 book A Dream About Lightning Bugs, Folds discussed the idea behind the song's title in a chapter called "Creative Visualization or Useful Delusion." He described a mode he entered from time to time, one that began with visualizing a seemingly impossible accomplishment as if it had already come to be. Results, he wrote, were fueled by temporary delusion, and that temporary state of craziness was what pushed a person to make the fantasy real, whether building a house, writing a movie or running a marathon.
The song circulated in many forms. A radio edit was released as a European single in 1996 by Intercord Records, with live tracks recorded on August 12, 1995, at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and mixed the following May at Rutabaga Studios in Arlington, Virginia. A 2002 performance from the Moore Theatre in Seattle, released on Ben Folds Live, worked the Dick Dale surf rock classic "Misirlou" into the song, and an in-studio version appeared on the 2005 download-only album iTunes Originals – Ben Folds.
Philosophy runs at 97 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.47 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 619 ms. It is in C major, Camelot 8B, which shares its notes with A minor and mixes cleanly with F major and G major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.