Stunner of 69
The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt on returning to his fin de siècle triumph, 69 Love Songs
THE trouble with magnum opuses, Stephin Merritt is fast realising, is the cost and effort of regular restoration. “Oh my god, I’m not looking forward to learning the whole thing again!” he sighs, facing the prospect of once more scaling his three-hour 1999 masterpiece 69 Love Songs for a series of fullalbum shows in 2024. “And all in a different key, because I was playing baritone guitar on the original tour and I assume I won’t be for this one.”
A run of 25th-anniversary US shows has been announced for the spring, with UK dates strongly rumoured to follow. “I’d be amazed if it didn’t happen,” Merritt grins, reclining backstage at the Oasis Teatro club in Zaragoza, Spain, two dates into a European tour. “I would fire my booking agent.”
Last performed in full in 2001, when Peter Gabriel joined the band for the record’s cornerstone heartbreaker “The Book Of Love” at the Lyric Hammersmith, 69 Love Songs has evolved in far more than key in the past quarter-century. An instant critical smash for its vast revue-style variety of stylistic experiment and superlative songwriting, the album fell between end-of-decade critic lists owing to being listed for pre-sale in 1999 but largely unavailable until 2000. “It seems appropriate,” argues Merritt. “Falling between gaps, genres and categories seems to be more or less the whole idea of 69 Love Songs. Why not fall in between centuries as well?”
Over time, this three-cd album devoted to devotion has burrowed ever further into the emotional marrow of 21st-century music. With a song for every romantic occasion from first blush to final howl – and all the domestic murder, cannibalism and dog-based innuendo to be found in between – 69 Love Songs has become an inexhaustible compendium of comforts for those who’ve loved, lost and lamented.
“Singing ‘The Book Of Love’ after I’ve sung it at several weddings and a funeral is very different from singing it before,” says Merritt. “The first time I sang ‘The book of love is long and boring’ in front of an audience, everyone laughed, it seemed silly. Now it’s become sort of stately and official and everyone cries. Seven-year-old girls sing it on Danish talent contests. It’s become a very different song.”
At these Spanish shows, the 69 Love Songs material appears to still connect with newer generations, despite Merritt’s concern that some bits might struggle to pass a modern sensitivity reading. “If it were made now, it wouldn’t have some risqué things that seemed only slightly risqué at the time and now seem borderline shocking,” he confesses. “I can imagine the record company refusing to put out a few of the songs.”
Unlike some artists with such backcatalogue behemoths behind them, Merritt has never come to resent his most celebrated work for towering over the rest of his canon. “That was the whole point,” he admits. “It was a publicity stunt and it worked. It more than dectupled my record sales, and in name recognition, it changed my career.” Yet, looking back, does he ever wonder what possessed him to undertake such a Herculean songwriting task? “No, I thought it was a good idea! My mother said, on the contrary, ‘It’s shooting yourself in the foot!’ I lord that over her to this day.”
“The first time I sang ‘The book of love is long and boring’ in front of an audience, everyone laughed”