The Magnetic Fields – 69 Love Songs (1999)

Even though I consider myself quite aware of the indie scene, I wasn't aware of this band until my band's lead singer started talking about one of this band's songs about three years ago. After that discussion, I listened to this album a little bit on Spotify and later that year I bought the CD for a really affordable price from play.com. The annoying thing about ordering CDs online is that more than once I have received a broken plastic case in the mail. This happened again with this album. And because this is a thick CD case that takes all the three CDs, it's more difficult to replace the broken case. This goes to show that you should always support your local record stores instead of online sales. Not that these covers are that nice to begin with. In fact, this is one of the ugliest album covers I have ever seen.



First of all, I have to say that this album is way too long. I feel like the only reason to make this album so long (3 CDs) is to get to use this hilarious (not) number 69 in the title. There are many good songs on this album, but I feel like they could have just made one really good CD rather than this. 3 CDs is way too much to listen to in one go, so you just end up listening to the first half of the album. Also, I think there are some filler songs on this album that could've easily be left out.

That said, there's a lot of good in this album as well. Stephen Merritt's lyrics are mostly really funny and witty, and his laconic baritone voice kind of fits these songs even though his voice is not very well trained. When the band wants to go melodic, the melodies are enjoyable. The sounds range from really lo-fi and buzzing sounds to full-on produced indie rock.

Merritt had the idea for this album listening to music in a gay piano bar in New York. He felt like he has to write some more theatrical music as a result. Merritt's idea was to create an album, not about love, but about love songs. The stories on this album take heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual approaches to love.

I think the first CD is the best one on the album. That's really fortunate, because I end up listening to this CD more than the others. It has some of my favourite songs from this band, such as I Didn't Believe In The Sun, I Don't Want to Get Over You and The Luckies Guy on the Lower East Side. On the second CD though, is probably my favourite of all, Papa Was a Rodeo. The last album has a great song Busby Berkeley Dreams. So, in essence, you have to remember to listen to all of the CDs. I've resolved this on my i-Pod by removing all the songs that I'm not too keen on and the result is a fantastic shorter album that would've fit on one CD.

I'm not good at listening to lyrics. Most of the time I just pay attention to sounds and melody. With this album, though, I think it's essential to also listen to the lyrics and really put effort in listening to them. Otherwise you'll lose much of the album's appeal.

Listen to the album on Spotify.