The Magnetic Fields — 69 Love Songs

Here’s how the story goes: Stephen Merritt was sitting in a Manhattan gay bar listening to a pianist’s interpretations of the songs of the legend of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim, when he decided to write 69 songs about love songs. Lyrically tongue-in-cheek, musically esoteric, spanning straight pop, baroque, country and every genre in-between, played with every western musical instrument conceivable, the resultant album, 69 Love Songs is a nearly three-hour-long exploration of the western love song. 

If it weren’t for the incredible wit of Stephen Merritt and the earnest vocal stylings of Merritt, Claudio Gonson, LD Beghtol, et al, the concept might have worn thin within the first three songs. After all, it’s hard enough to retain interest with plain old love songs; this concept has all the pitfalls of a gimmick. As it turns out, with deft pop sensibilities and a strong commitment to the central theme of the loneliness of idealised love, the Magnetic Fields make light of the two hardest questions to answer in popular music: how to write a good hook and how to write good lyrics. 

My first outing with this album was a little less than a decade ago, heart bruised by unexpressed (and certainly unrequited) love. I identified with the loserdom expressed by The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side, the hopeless romanticism of the double-whammy that is I Need A New Heart followed by The Book of Love (made popular by an appearance of the Peter Gabriel cover on Scrubs), and my personal favourite The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure, which I covered on the first album I ever released (as Omega Oblivion). In the years since, I’ve found several favourites in this album. My only criticism: there’s filler, in my opinion, plenty of it, but way way way lesser of it than you’d expect in a three-hour album.