Give Your Lover a 69 for Valentine’s Day

Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about the Magnetic Fields’ 1999 masterpiece 69 Love Songs. It is, as the title suggests, 69 “love” songs. There’s no way to accurately describe all of the songs in a general manner, they run the gamut from your run of the mill indie-pop to country to electronica. They’re not all brilliant, but there’s enough in there to find something from everyone, even your (perhaps) musically challenged significant other.

Why does it work? Most likely because of lead songwriter Stephin Merritt’s talent and unique approach. In a recent interview with Onion A.V. Club, Merritt pointed out that

You know, most love songs are not cheesy and corny. Most love songs are complaints, I think. Or about unrequited love, coming at it from some oblique angle. Only the ones that say “I love you” over and over are the cheesy, corny ones that people complain about. At least half the songs people hear in the world are love songs. I feel like my love songs, probably none of which just say “I love you” over and over again, are in the mainstream of that tradition of being a little off.

The brilliance in Merritt’s songs lies mostly with their sarcastic remarks (How Fucking Romantic), brilliant insights (They’ll Be Time Enough for Rocking When We’re Old), or casual self-deprecation (I Think I Need a New Heart).

Some of the funniest love songs come from his attacks on clichés. My favorite is from The Book of Love: “The book of love is long and boring / no one can lift the damn thing / it's full of charts and facts and figures / and instructions for dancing.” Merritt describes this process:

I don’t think there are any clichés I try to avoid. As soon as I spot a cliché, I go for it. I feel like clichés are the most useful thing in songwriting. They’re the tool on which you build all the rest of the song. Clichés that other people should try to avoid, I suppose, are rhyming “dance” with “romance,” or putting the word “love” at the end of a line and having to rhyme it. That’s about it. If you want to write a love song, you need to not try to write it for a particular person in a particular situation. It needs to be vague, otherwise you’re going to fall into trap after trap of trying to rhyme with somebody’s name. Keep it vague. That’s the T-shirt from this article.

All in all, there is a lot going on here. It’s going to take some time. But what better way to spend Valentine’s Day with your better half than listening to great music that can make you life, cry, and cringe from song to song? Here’s the 18 I would start with:

Absolutely Cuckoo
All Your Little Words
A Chicken with its Head Cut Off
Reno Dakota
I Don’t Want to Get Over You
Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits
Come Back from San Francisco
The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be
The Book of Love
I Think I need a New Heart
How Fucking Romantic
Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing
Roses
Time Enough for Rocking When We’re Old
Very Funny
(Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy
Papa Was a Rodeo
Love is Like a Bottle of Gin



*Disclaimer: I’ve never tried this before. The closest I came to “sharing” this album with someone was with my friend Deacon, and while our romance is unflappable, it may not be the type most of you share.