The ambitious project from The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs, enjoys its 20th birthday today.
We’ve enjoyed 20 long years of love songs thanks to The Magnetic Fields, yet we have to admit we haven’t sat down with this album to listen to it from top to bottom. But then again, that’s probably not how it was intended to be heard.
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.
Listen to ‘A Chicken With It’s Head Cut Off’ below
The album goes for three whole hours, and is indubitably focused on the concept of love. Naturally nothing says love more than the number 69, and so the band set out on making 69 songs about the icky thing we call love.
In their review of the album, which scored a 9.0/10, Pitchfork wrote:
“Therein lies the paradox of 69 Love Songs— it’s such a basic style of music that it’s easy to dismiss it as “just pop music.” Of course, that’s what it is, so should it really deserve such high praise? Should it rank among the best albums of the 1990s? Or is it too bizarre to be considered culturally important? I mean, Abbey Road is a pretty weird album, too. Then again, Abbey Road isn’t three hours long.”
“And the songs themselves? Well, I could write a thesis dissecting each and every song on this album, but that would take months. As a prism refracts light into a spectrum of colors, 69 Love Songs not only refracts love into a spectrum of emotions, but also refracts the love song itself into a spectrum of musical forms”
Listen to ‘The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side’ below
