Anna Goodman (musician)
American composer
Anna Harris Goodman is an American songwriter who was married to Ben Folds from 1987 to 1992. She was best friends with Folds since they were schoolchildren, and encouraged him to play piano at a young age. She was the manager of his band Majosha in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were married at a young age in their early 20s, and often collaborated on songwriting. She co-wrote several Ben Folds Five songs including:
"Alice Childress" (Ben Folds Five)
"The Last Polka" (Ben Folds Five)
"Kate" (Whatever and Ever Amen)
"Smoke" (Whatever and Ever Amen)
"Lullabye" (The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner)
Goodman was also a long-time member of Sin-é Cafe's resident band Porkchop, which was composed of Beavis and Butt-Head directors and producers, Mike de Sève and Brian Mulroney; Ryan Adams guitarist J. P. Bowersock; Dale Burleyson; Gaijin a Go-Go's Phil Maynes; Brad Brown and Chris LaFrenz.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Anna Goodman (musician)” is american composer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Anna, Goodman and musician, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “american composer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4767041. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anna Goodman (musician)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.