My Top 1000 Songs #405: Balls

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

As noted previously, Amy Rigby is one of my absolute favorite songwriters. Over a musical palette of gentle pop & rock and jangly Americana, she earnestly sings about motherhood, single life & marriage, sex, femininity, and class in a way that few artists dare. And she often tempers the sadness and frustration of her songs with humor and self-deprecation. This is arguably best demonstrated on the relatively rollicking "Balls," from 2000's The Sugar Tree. Once again, our feckless narrator finds herself stuck with a no-good man, knowing she should do better but somehow helpless in going along for the ride.

"I've been seeing a pattern here, how you get lost when I get too near. Then you come around maybe once a week, like some guys go out to bowl." Damn, grow a pair! 

Solo acoustic performance, 2002:

Fun YouTube cover...