Some albums create their own little universes. The Beatles’ White Album, for instance, or Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, or Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, or Beyoncé’s Lemonade. However, when it comes to evoking an all-encompassing lyrical and musical world, no album that I’ve ever listened to compares with the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs.
Since its release as a triple CD set in September of 1999, 69 Love Songs has earned plenty of praise, ending up on a number of “greatest albums of all time” lists, although not usually in the top 100. That’s a shame: knowing this album has been one of the great pleasures of my life. Whenever the subject of favorite albums arises, and someone says they’ve never heard of 69 Love Songs, I do my best to remedy the situation.
All 69 of the songs on the album were composed by Stephin Merritt, whose songcraft sounds like the happy marriage of Cole Porter and Lou Reed. Merritt has said that “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.” That’s the sort of distancing statement you’d expect from the writer of so many uber-ironic lyrics, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.
I came across 69 Love Songs during a great transformation in my own emotional life, when I was ready for something BIG. Sure, I could hear the satire in Merritt’s droll baritone as he announced that his heart was “running around like a chicken with his head cut off,” or that he couldn’t sustain a relationship because his “papa was a rodeo” and he “never stuck around long enough for a one night stand.” Yet the music itself, simple though the melodies often are, suggests that the lyrics are just a cover for the singer’s feelings, which are too intense to be communicated through standard songwriting clichés.
Obviously, this is a prodigious and sprawling album, and not every song has had equal effort put into its composition. “Punk Love,” for instance, is less than a minute long and mostly repeats the phrase “punk rock love.” In another throwaway, Merritt states the title “Experimental Music Love,” which simply echoes with weird effects for thirty seconds. Then it’s over. But even these little one-offs, in the context of almost three hours of music, become memorable stops on the album’s meandering map, brief but amusing.
Then there are songs that, by my reckoning, belong in the Great American Songbook. “Busby Berkeley Dreams” is a piano ballad with an extravagant central image that turns out to be essential in conveying the singer’s longing for his beloved. “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side” is about a man who owns a jalopy only because his girl adores driving around New York. And with just a ukulele and a amusing yet heart-wrenching lyric, “Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing” manages to conjure up an evening of great pathos and tenderness.
To be sure, Merritt’s love of comic rhymes can be a bit overwhelming—who else would think to rhyme “It’s making me blue” with “Pantone 392”—but that’s all part of the fun. If love often makes the singers on the album (there are 4 of them, besides Merritt) sad and upset, the humor in the lyrics assures those of us who have been heartbroken or desperate for love that we can overcome our sorrow.
In short, 69 Love Songs is a feast for the ears and the mind and the emotions. If you haven’t heard it for a while, I recommend diving back in as soon as possible. And if this album is new to you, how I envy your initial voyage into, well, the very sea of love.
— David Starkey served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate. The Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College, he is currently Co-editor of Anacapa Review and The California Review of Books, and Publisher and Co-editor of Gunpowder Press.
You can read David Starkey’s poem "Poor Ghost" in Issue 305 (Autumn 2025). Order the issue now:
Order Issue 305 - Autumn 2025 (Canadian Addresses)
Order Issue 305 - Autumn 2025 (International Addresses)
