69 Love Songs (1999)

69 Love Songs is the sixth studio album by American indie pop band the Magnetic Fields, released on September 7, 1999, by Merge Records. As its title indicates, 69 Love Songs is a three-volume concept album composed of 69 love songs, all written by Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt.

Conception and live performance

69 Love Songs was originally conceived as a music revue. Stephin Merritt was sitting in a gay piano bar in Manhattan, listening to the pianist's interpretations of Stephen Sondheim songs, when he decided he ought to get into theatre music because he felt he had an aptitude for it. "I decided I'd write one hundred love songs as a way of introducing myself to the world. Then I realized how long that would be. So I settled on sixty-nine. I'd have a theatrical revue with four drag queens. And whoever the audience liked best at the end of the night would get paid." He also found inspiration in Charles Ives' 114 Songs, about which he had read earlier in the day: "songs of all kinds, and what a monument it was, and I thought, well, I could do something like that."

Other influences on 69 Love Songs included Fleetwood Mac, Billie Holiday and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Merritt wrote much of the album at Dick's Bar in New York, saying that he was "literally there eight hours a day, writing".

On seven occasions (five in the United States and two in London over four consecutive nights) the Magnetic Fields performed all 69 love songs, in order, over two nights. Several of the lavish orchestrations are more simply arranged when performed live, due to limited performers and/or equipment.

Genres and themes

Merritt has said "69 Love Songs is not remotely an album about love. It's an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love." The album features songs in many different genres, including country, synth-pop, free jazz, and mournful love ballads. All the songs deal with love in one form or another, but often in an ironic or off-beat fashion, such as the track "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!" which tells the story of a husband murdering his wife. The songs on 69 Love Songs feature lyrics exploring heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual relationships.

Release

The album was initially released in the United States by Merge on September 7, 1999, as a box set with a booklet containing a Merritt interview by Daniel Handler, and as three separate individual volumes—catalogue numbers MRG166 (Vol. 1), MRG167 (Vol. 2), MRG168 (Vol. 3), and MRG169 (box set). On May 29, 2000, the album was released by Circus (CIR CD003) in Europe and Australia without the booklet insert. It was reissued in the United Kingdom through Domino as REWIGCD18.

On April 20, 2010, Merge released a limited edition 6×10" vinyl version limited to 1,000 copies.

Critical reception

69 Love Songs received widespread acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 88, indicating "universal acclaim". Betty Clarke of The Guardian hailed it as "an album of such tenderness, humour and bloody-minded diversity, it'll have you throwing away your preconceptions and wondering how you ever survived a broken heart without it." In Spin, Douglas Wolk lauded the album as Merritt's "masterwork" and stated that "pop hasn't seen a lyricist of Merritt's kind and caliber since Cole Porter", praising his unique takes on standard love song clichés. Pitchfork's Nick Mirov wrote that Merritt "has proven himself as an exceptional songwriter, making quantum leaps in quality as well as quantity on 69 Love Songs." Robert Christgau, writing for The Village Voice, stated that despite his personal dislike of cynicism and reluctance to "link it to creative exuberance", the album's "cavalcade of witty ditties—one-dimensional by design, intellectual when it feels like it, addicted to cheap rhymes, cheaper tunes, and token arrangements, sung by nonentities whose vocal disabilities keep their fondness for pop theoretical—upends my preconceptions the way high art's sposed to."

69 Love Songs was voted second place in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1999, behind Moby's Play. The poll's creator Robert Christgau selected it as the best album of the year in his "Dean's List". It was ranked at number 465 in Rolling Stone's 2012 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and at number 406 in the 2020 edition of the list. 69 Love Songs was further ranked at number 213 in NME's 2013 list of the 500 all-time greatest albums. It was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. In 2024, Mark Beaumont stated that 69 Love Songs "will remain underrated until it's consistently mentioned in the same breaths as Pet Sounds and the White Album."

According to Nielsen SoundScan, as of 2015 the three-volume boxed set has sold 83,000 copies, with an additional 58,000 for volume one, 34,000 for volume two, and 29,000 for volume three.