Army

In this song, Ben Folds is going through a life crisis and is thinking about joining the Army, since nothing else is working out. It is mostly autobiographical: Folds was in a band called Majosha that broke up, with some of the other members forming another band without Ben. He had also been divorced twice by this point ("my ex-wives all despise me"). He took some liberties in the part about dropping out of college after three semesters, blowing $15000 of his dad's money: He left the University of Miami after just one semester, but he was on scholarship. He also never had a mullet, although he later grew a mini mullet because the hair on the top of his head grows slower than the back. He didn't work at Chick-fil-A, but did have a jog at a Hardee's in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Folds plays this regularly at concerts. He often gets up from his piano and conducts the crowd for the horn part, having them sing the horn lines for him. Depending on the crowd, it sometimes sounds surprisingly good.

The best we can tell, this is the first major-label release to mention Chick-fil-A in the lyrics. The restaurant chain, famously closed on Sundays, later earned mentions in many hip-hop songs and a few country tracks. Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood banter about Chick-fil-A in the song "High Life," and Kanye West repeats, "Closed on Sunday, you're my Chick-fil-A" in his track "Closed on Sunday."