Here’s another song that goes quickly from the silly to the serious, Ani DiFranco’s “Fuel.”
Maybe I should put a bucket over my head
And a marshmallow in each ear
And stumble around for another dumb numb week
For another humdrum hit song to appear
DiFranco’s a much more electrifying presence live than on her recorded albums — I saw her at Penn State in 1998, and I still think her live double album Living in Clip, released the year before, is some of the best work she’s ever done. I like her more recent music, and some of it quite a lot, but maybe not as much as the earlier songs. I only just bought her 2003 album Evolve, and she’s released four other albums since then. (To say nothing of bootlegs and compilation packages.)
It’s with this song, and the rest of ’98’s Little Plastic Castle, that I first discovered DiFranco’s music. There’s definitely a spoken-word feel to it, and I still listen to it all the time.