and i went, i don t know, i lltry. and the answer was, yeah, i can. i mean, a bit. and then somewhere between then and now, i got better at it. your next choice for this cultural life is the 1997 album, whatever and ever amen, by the american singer songwriter ben folds. what ben did is gave me hope as what i later described myself as a rock n roll nerd, you know? in that song, i say, i always dreamt of being a star, but he learnt piano instead of guitar, which in the 90s doesn t get you very far because that was my experience. i was deep in the grunge. west australia, in my part of perth in the 90s, was just grunge and i was a pianist doing songs for theatre and stuff and thinking, is there.? i mean, obviously i can t sell records, my band won t go anywhere because, you know, it s too nerdy. and then ben came along, just thrashing the hell out
to have been involved. and a personal affirmation for you, for your work. has it changed the way that you write songs or the way that you feel about your confidence, for instance, in being a songwriter? yeah, it completely changed my life because i was on this comedy trajectory, and i think i always thought i would leverage the reputation i had got. i always wanted to get back to acting and stuff, but i. i think i had basically gone, 0h, satire, that s obviously my thing. and obviously it was, i obviously had some propensity, but when matthew asked me to write matilda, not only did he get me to write it, but after my first drafts, one of the things he said to me is, oh, this song here, you re kind of wink. you re commenting, it s commenting on itself? it s very meta? and i m like, yeah, that s, i was born in 1975. we are the meta generation. it s all irony. you know, you re a step removed. you re commenting, right? and it s only got worse since that.
and i want to be like david. like, they were doing musical satire, and the beatles were winking and nodding and giggling through the whole thing, until they got super serious. but so much of it was sardonic. and ben folds definitely, with rockin the suburbs and all that, and one angry dwarf and all that, was right on some sort of cusp between pop and satire. 0ne angry dwarf and 200. solemn faces. ..solemn faces, which is the opening track on this album. great title, isn t it? forever and ever amen. yeah. # now i m big and important # 0ne angry dwarf # and 200 solemn faces # and you # if you really want to see me, check # the papers and the tv.# that s a revenge song, isn t it? yeah, i guess. you have written your own revenge song in the past, haven t you? i have written lots of revenge songs, yeah. there s one in particular.
that, of course, comes whenever anyone gets any popularity. there s got to be an equal and opposite reaction. and he wrote in the guardian, which was the paper i read and which had, what, in 2005, five million readers? it was pretty big because it was before it alljumped off the page, and he wrote this just utterly sneering review, one star review, really snobby in that sort of guardian way, like, quoting shakespeare. i was like, how dare you quote shakespeare at me? i ll quote shakespeare at you! and just incredibly sneering and ungenerous, a thing that just says i m terrible at myjob. it really, really threw me. and so, like, a year later, when i had to come up with a new show, i thought, well, i m going to take that guy down. so i wrote the song for phil daoust. # ding, dang, ding dang dong # this ends my phil daoust song # everybody sing along # la la la
# only a ginger can call another ginger, ginger.# and he enjoyed it. it probably would ve been a bit edgy for matthew. he wouldn t have necessarily agreed with everything i said, but he thought my songs were very clever and angular in a way that he thought matched dahl. he wasn t sure about whether i was right because it was all very sardonic and sarcastic. but sometimes, for an encore, i d go on and drop all the irony. and that night i went on and played white wine in the sun, which is my christmas song for my daughter. and about your family, about reconnecting? about home, and it makes people sob. # you won t understand # but you will learn some day # # that wherever you are and whatever you face # # these are the people who make you feel safe # in this world # and matthew went, 0h, 0k,