The Magnetic Fields Album: “69 Love Songs”

In the Sixties, people used to sometimes write "Clapton is God" on the sides of buildings, so let me be the first to write "Merritt is God." (Though I wouldn't be surprised if somebody beat me to it.) The sheer number of great songs in this collection is staggering. After getting used to each volume separately, I now typically listen to the entire collection in sequence, setting aside three hours for the experience.

It's amazing how consistently high the quality is here. There are only three songs I hate--"Punk Love," "Love Is Like Jazz," and "Promises of Eternity"--and Merritt has gotten so far into my head that I wonder if the first two, at least, were intentionally designed to be hated. The theme of this album is diversity, after all, and how could a 69 song collection be diverse if you liked every song?

Merritt and his merry band of guest vocalists (24 songs are not sung by him) mix images of joy, sorrow, male, female, gay, straight, lust, true love, and just about anything else you can think of that has to do with romantic love. Merritt wisely avoided trying to string the songs together thematically, instead choosing a looser approach that gives "69 Love Songs" the feel of a really good (and delightfully long) mix tape.

A list of the songs I like, or even the songs I love, would be too lengthy to include here. For example, the first eight songs on Volume One are all knockouts, and even the ninth one, "Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits," is an amusing and entirely harmless OMD ripoff. There are great tunes in the 80s pop mode that Merritt has always favored ("The Death of Ferdinand DeSaussure" and "Long Forgotten Fairytale" are highlights), excellent piano ballads ("My Only Friend," "Busby Berkely Dreams"), and even some folky songs, though nothing seems too far removed from Broadway--and I usually don't even like showtunes. Then there are true oddities like the very first track, "Absolutely Cuckoo," which to me resembles a pop song that has been shattered into hundreds of colorful pieces and whirled around in a kaleidoscope.

Unless you're sure you're going to like this, I would suggest buying Volume One first (preferably used) and giving yourself some time to get used to it. Songs that sound almost throwaway on the first few listens may become favorites. If you find yourself becoming addicted to the disc, you can then trade it in and buy the entire set. You will want the whole thing because it comes with a big fat booklet in which Stephin Merritt discusses every single song in the collection. Considering that there are actually four albums' worth of material here (each disc is just under an hour long) it is actually a great buy.

I have two other Magnetic Fields discs, "The Charm of the Highway Strip" and "Holiday," and neither of them contain the range that you'll find here. The sound of "69 Love Songs" is based mostly on acoustic instruments, though often they are recorded or mixed in unusual ways. (I suspect that Merritt has Brian Eno's early albums in his collection.) So even if you're familiar with Stephin Merritt's other work but do not consider yourself to be a fan, you owe it to yourself to give "69 Love Songs" a try. There's nothing else like it. You may even end up, like me, with a strange compulsion to go out and buy yourself a ukelele.

I'm a 51-year-old baby boomer, and I figure I've spent tens of thousands of dollars over my lifetime on 45s, LPs, cassettes, and CDs of almost every kind of music. My CD collection totals 842 titles as of today, and 69 Love Songs is the greatest thing I own. To Stephin Merritt, thanks so much for "When My Boy Walks Down the Street."

I don't think anyone here has mentioned how funny most of the songs are. Long-Forgotten Fairytale, for example, is a wicked parody of that stupid 80s song The Promise by When in Rome (it even has the same repeating bass line in the same key! ). I cracked up when I first heard it, but none of my friends noticed the resemblance until I pointed it out. Don't believe all the comments here saying that only 1/3 of the songs are any good. There are actually only about a handful of duds here. If your musical taste is limited to only top 40 and/or Modern Rock on the radio AND you hate everything else, I can understand why you'd only like 1/3 of the songs here. If however your ears are open to music from many different genres, you won't have any trouble digging most of the songs in this box.

one

when i first started listening to this album, I was enjoying the melancholic existence of an alcoholised student with no girlfriend. 69 love songs provided me with an ideal sountrack to which I could plunge into my Sentimental Reveries.

the one thing that saved the album (and myself) from ever being a pathetic 'smooche' was the ever-present dark humor and sharp wit of Stephin Merrit. and of course... the musical briliancy and playfulnes that complements (and occasionaly, contradicts) the lyrics.

two

when i found The Love Of My Life, the 69 love songs took on a new meaning for me. no longer was Stephin Merrit a depressing but trusted traveling partner in my sentimental and drunken explorations of the world of Unfulfilled Love. rather he provided an inexhaustable resource of romantic imagery which I would readily apply to myself and my Lover. again, think i mostly managed to avoid the Pathetic by keeping an ounce of cynism always at hand...

three

now, after The Love Of My Life unambigously declared that i was not The Love Of Her Life, i find the music unbearable. 'Papa Was A Rodeo' makes me thing of the Romance Of The Century and how it slipped through my fingers. the celebratory joy of 'When My Boy Walks Down The Street' makes me think of she who used to be My Girl walking down the street. 'Underwear' and 'Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabits' well...

conclusion

Sentimentaly/Romance and Cynisism/Reason always seemed to me like oposite and unreconcilable poles on the sphere of love, but for a true expresion of love in art (which i belive 69 lovesongs is) perhaps they must exist in together in a permanent state of ambivalence?

69 love songs is in my opinion a seminal acheivment in pop lyricism. it is staggeringly impressive in scope and substance, but always delightfully whimsical and flimsy, never self-important.

let all musicans and lovers of the world go forth and be inspired

Well, yes, there is some filler. But for 3 CDs and 69 songs, Stephen Merritt is allowed some slack. The rest is gorgeous, nearly a dictionary definition of indie pop. Most of the instrumentation is sparse, allowing the witty lyrics to come to the foreground. Many different styles appear here, with only the loose theme of "love" to tie them together. A lot of the songs deal with the messy end of love - making this set perfect for the heartbroken as well as the head-over-heels couples.