This is circa 2001—I would have been 14, and very unpleasantly adjusting to high school—and I remember very clearly watching this performance live, on the Late Late Show, and being stunned by it. It was the first time I’d seen anybody own being “nerdy” or “dorky” and “sarcastic” or “ironic” or whatever I was or wished I was, and it was really liberating, in a weird way. I bought this CD—I was really disappointed the keytar solo wasn’t on the studio version—and then all the Ben Folds Five CDs I could find, and that was the pose I tried to affect for a while. 

Cool-nerd is so pervasive now, and destructive, even, that it was surprising to watch this again and immediately remember how fresh it felt at the time.