Credit: Far Out / Domino Recording Co
Thu 17 September 2026 2:00, UK
In order to get noticed in the music industry, you first have to give someone a reason to notice you. For some, this comes in the form of writing a tune that simply cannot leave your head, or it comes in the form of a marketing campaign which seizes your attention. For others, like The Magnetic Fields, it is a confluence of both.
Prior to their third album, 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields were just another indie East Coast band with something fairly interesting to say. Having released their debut song, ‘100,000 Fireflies’, in 1991, the band had slowly begun to be noticed, though it was mostly by underground and college radio stations. Releasing music in between that, they hadn’t really broken into mainstream consciousness. That was until lead singer and principal songwriter Stephin Merritt thought that he ought to get into theatre music to offer something different.
At the time of the realisation, Merritt was sitting in a gay piano bar in Manhattan, listening to pianists interpret Stephen Sondheim songs. “I decided I’d write one hundred love songs as a way of introducing myself to the world. Then I realised how long that would be. So, I settled on 69. 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.”
Another inspiration for the album also came in the form of Charles Ives’ 114 Songs, as he added, “It had songs of all kinds, and what a monument it was, and I thought, well, I could do something like that”. Merritt proceeded to spend eight hours each day writing these songs and composed most of them in Dick’s Bar in New York. “My labour was very cheap at the time,” he admitted, “So, devoting a year of full-time labour to one project didn’t seem all that unreasonable”.
The album was subsequently released on September 7th, 1999. Critically, it was an instant success due to its revue-style variety and superlative songwriting. The album was not, however, shortlisted for many end-of-decade lists, as it was listed for pre-sale in 1999 but was unavailable to buy until 2000. Merritt actually liked this, noting, “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?”
Many of the songs, to him, have also taken on meanings he never quite thought they would. “Singing ‘The Book of Love’ after I’ve sung it at several weddings and a funeral is very different from singing it before,” he added, “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.”
Unlike many artists, Merritt has also never come to resent the album. Instead, he relishes it and considers it rather validating, saying, “It was a publicity stunt, and it worked. It more than dectupled my record sales, and in name recognition, it changed my career”.
Further reading: From The Vault
The songs from the album have since taken on lives of their own, covered by the likes of Peter Gabriel, Olivia Rodrigo and Orville Peck, with several of those covers finding their way into television shows and films. Peter Gabriel’s cover of ‘The Book of Love’, for instance, was used in the Jennifer Lopez film Shall We Dance, and Merritt has even credited the song with helping him buy a house.
Perhaps, in turn, that is the greatest joke of 69 Love Songs. What began as a theatrical idea dreamt up in a Manhattan piano bar became an album that finally gave The Magnetic Fields the recognition Merritt had been trying to find. While he set out to write 69 love songs as a publicity stunt, that stunt became his career.
