Ben Folds is an ingenious musician and songwriter. In 1997, during the heyday of his band Ben Folds Five, he also made an experimental solo album under the name Fear of Pop. The entire album is a super collection of oddities, punctuated by some special gems.

Off of that album (Fear of Pop, Volume 1), I present "In Love," with its infectious pentatonic instrumental theme that will never, ever leave your mind.

The vocals are a poem written and recited by Willam Shatner. It's an immortal performance. This song inexplicably kicked off quite a little era of collaboration between Folds and Shatner. Forget all of that trivia. "In Love" has the musical excellence to stand alone as a supreme one-off.

The song builds with excellent advances in instrumentation over the repeating chord sequence. The string work is varied and delicate. The guitar work is dreamy. The percussion pairs a dinky machine with an acoustic set that grows more soaring as Shatner's layers his outrage. The doubling creates a surreal gait for an already weirdly paced, loungey beat. How did this song happen?

I have listened to this track fifty thousand times.