Yahoo HomeStephin Merritt
| Born | February 9, 1965 |
| Hometown | Yonkers, New York, United States of America |
| Height | 5'3" (1.60m) |
| Parents | Scott Fagan , Alix Merritt |
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How 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields helped me through heartbreak, one emotional sucker punch at a time
- Anybody whose partner of 10 years walks out without warning is likely to feel a bewildering rattle bag of emotions. If that partner leaves you alone in a relatively new town, with 24/7 care of two small children shortly to be diagnosed with ADHD and autism, those emotions can scatter and collide like marbles in a locked room. Anger crashes into despair and confusion with weird giddy rolls of euphoria and glassy moments of deadened inertia.When this happened to me, in September 2013, I turned to an extraordinary album that helped reflect and dissect the whole experience. Released in 1999, 69 Love Songs is a brilliant, sprawling, three-part record by The Magnetic Fields, the lo-fi indie collective formed in 1989 by Boston-born, New York-based songwriter Stephin Merritt with a revolving cast of male and female vocalists (plus author Lemony Snicket on accordion). Early albums included tributes to Phil Spector, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Cole Porter. Pop snobs loved the layers of reference: the songs were always about songs.
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- NewsThe Independent
Album reviews: The Shins – Heartworms, The Magnetic Fields – 50 Song Memoir, Valerie June – The Order of Time and more
As mid-life crises go, Stephin Merritt’s has to be one of the most orderly and focused. It’s not really a surprise – he was the man, after all, who created the wise and witty 69 Love Songs, and this project is tackled with a similarly methodical mix of melody, mirth and melancholy, and delivered through a comparably encyclopaedic array of musical modes. It starts off fairly low-key, Merritt’s birth in 1965 marked by “Wonder Where I’m From”, with simple ukulele strumming accompanying his musing
- NewsEvening Standard
The Magnetic Fields- 50 Song Memoir review: ‘Like binge-watching a surreal box set’
Critics inevitably say that every new album made by Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields doesn’t match up to the vaulting ambition of his 1999 what-it-says-on-the-tin masterpiece, 69 Love Songs, but this one comes closest: five discs, more than 100 instruments, and one song for each year of his life.
- NewsThe Independent
Album overload: How Bob Dylan and others take music to extremes
With Triplicate, though, comes the twist that this is the 75-year-old’s first triple album, a 30-track behemoth that, while a novelty for Dylan (not including his mammoth box sets), is nowhere near the year's longest album, let alone quantity of music promised by one act. In length, Triplicate will be surpassed by 50 Song Memoir, an autobiographical marathon also due next month from US songwriter Stephin Merritt, recording as the Magnetic Fields (one track for each year of his life, most full o
