The Magnetic Fields: Classic or Dud?

Since the mid-eighties at latest, there's been this omnipresent fallacy in the rock/pop world that "emotion" can only be conveyed spontaneously -- that "emotion" equates to lyrics that sound like stream-of-consciousness scribblings, and is inherently absent from anything that anyone sat down and thought about and wrote. You can trace this back to the whole Appolonian / Dionysian dialectic in art, or you can just take this pithy quote from the guy who runs Double Agent: "It's the difference between the Smiths -- the articulate expression of emotion -- and Pearl Jam or Soundgarden -- the emotional expression of inarticulateness." It's a hideous fallacy -- see any emo record for evidence of this assertion - - and it's already proven untenable, in that if it were true, the Smiths would be the most emotionless rock band of the past two decades.

This, in essence, seems to be Merritt's entire intellectual agenda w/r/t the pop song -- (and I'd point out to Mark that 69 Love Songs is far more aggressive about this agenda than most of his other work, toward which I can't really understand the "distant" charge being levelled). What makes Merritt valuable, in my eyes, is that he's one of very few people today who view the text of the pop song as something that can be whole and coherent for purposes other than humor or distance. He writes as a songwriter -- rather than trying, like so many singers, to pretend that some screen has been dropped and he's right there with you, rambling in your ear, he accepts the fact that he is writing texts for your consumption and entertainment, emotionally and intellectually, and this opens up a whole realm of address and possibility that's completely absent from the aspiring-poet's-diary school of lyricists. (His whole career is worth it for one line: "You won't be happy with me, but give me one more chance; you won't be happy anyway." Who else could do that?) I'd argue that this same sort of approach extends to the music he makes, as well, but this post is probably growing long enough as it is. Suffice it to say that I feel like there's a whole complex underlying his aims, specific fallacies that he's valuable for refuting, and chief among them is this idea that it's more authentic or more emotional to watch people do than it is to watch them think -- a concept that's largely alien to me, because my primary joy in art and words comes from the fact that they alone can serve as a conduit of people's thoughts.

That said, Holiday is, like, the greatest thing ever, except maybe the Dean Wareham song on the first 6ths album.

For me, the emotion level doesn't enter into it in my dislike of the Fields. I think that Merrit's lyrics are obnoxious and overreaching - I personally don't think his overvaunted wit is much of anything. I find the sound to be unforgivable. And Merrit's vocals are enough to make me shoot someone (and his choices in fellow vocalists are only a step above him). It all really boils down to the sound of it, for me - it sounds like a perfect sonic description of everything I hate about music. I can't describe it any more than that.

But yes, I agree that the concentration on that above all else is a mistake. I'm a Merritt agnostic, though, and I find that, far too often, the songs feel like an intellectual exercise. I find myself jerked out of any engagament with them by a recognition of the technique, which is so foregrounded in 69LS that I, like Mark, can appreciate the thing without ever getting anywhere near to loving it.

I'm generally reluctant to talk about literature, but maybe a parallel's with Georges Perec, whose literary career largely concerned rules and constraints. His 'Life A User's Manual' is may favourite novel ever: it succeeds in engaging me in both form and content where his 'A Void' fails to overcome its constraint (outrageously, omitting the letter e completely) amd ends up an interesting lexical exercise.

"Strange Powers", on the other hand, has strange powers over me.

As for Mark's comments, I'd offer the following sort of over- theoretical explanation of what is actually a fairly obvious concept. In aesthetics, I think, there are many instances in which going very far in one direction actually brings you around to its opposite -- my best examples of which are those sprightly, bouncy Cure songs that somehow seem like the logical end-point of gloom and frustration, toeing the inevitable line between "manic" and "depressed." With regard to my comments above, I'd say that Merritt, lyrically, manages to do exactly that w/r/t "emotional connection" and "spontaneity," . . . actually, I have to do something now, so I can't finish this thought. Suffice it to say that a line like "come back from San Francisco / and kiss me, I've quit smoking / I miss doing the wild thing with you" is pretty hard to call stilted or distant or emotionless or something-you-can't-relate to -- this is about as plain and everyday an emotional admission as you could possibly want from a song.

I regard Merritt almost as Morrissey once used to regard himself - in terms of finality, endings, and tying things up. The MFs mean a great deal to me, partly because of my investment in "the pop song", which (investment) has only been clarified and intensified (not dissipated) by (eventually) hearing them.

From my POV, 69LS is a Very Major Event In Pop History. Holiday, on the other hand, I think is close to his weakest work ever.

=

>>> I appreciated that particular articulation more than, in the past, I've appreciated a lot of articulations of why people *like* the [MFs'] music.

I can't give a technical explanation right now but Gershwin's "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" sounds like a 20s melody to me, "White Rabbit" like a 60s melody, "Bizarre Love Triangle" like an 80s melody. When the Bangles covered "Hazy Shade of Winter," it still sounded like a 60s melody. When Frente did an acoustic version of "BLT" in the 90s it still sounded like an 80s melody. Has to do, I think, with the lengths of the phrases and the intervals chosen.

Lo-fi isn't a problem for me. I don't think 69LS is more lo-fi than my favourite Sonic Youth albums. It's definitely more hi-fi than anything I've done! The guitar line on "Boa Constrictor," which is probably as good as the playing gets on the set, strikes me as competent not exceptional. I definitely think there's more musical substance to the MF when they go electronic. "Ability" was probably a poor choice of terms on my part - "accomplishment" maybe.

I'm assuming that the recent posts defending SM's lyrics are in response to Mark's criticisms and not to mine because my problem wasn't with Merritt trying to be witty and ironic and crafty and distanced. I was in fact looking for witty, well-crafted pop songwriting. I think I just generally find that too often they offer romantic tropes, stock situations, and non-reflexive (is that a real term?) self-pity. Or something like that. I like that the Smiths could create characters with whom you could empathize but also realize their (and your) failings and errors - I like my self-pity with a level of self-consciousness.

I hate the Cure's lyrics for their romantic melodrama.

(Rock ballads that I like I think I usually like despite the lyrics.) "Come back from San Fransisco/And kiss me I've quit smoking" was one of the best moments on the set I thought -- it was too bad it had to be followed by "I miss doing the wild thing with you."

.. "My Heart's Runnin' Round Like a Chicken With Its Head Cut Off" - that's the tune I can't shake.

They're great live - but 69LS didn't do much for me. Not that I thought it was drivel - I just never got into it like Holiday or Get Lost.

Sonically I enjoy them as well. Summer Lies and Busby Berkly Dreams are beautiful songs, even without words.

i rather like the Magnetic Fields now. I still only own that one album. I may have listened to the whole album, every song back to back, once. I don't care whther it's sincere or clever. It has some catchy little tunes for me, and i like the fact that it's a jumbled mess, like a big box full of broken toys.

i rather like the Eggers comparison, even though i don't want to get into the cleverness for its own sake mode, as i may have managed to avoid thinking of the Magnetic Fields critically altogether, and been healthier for it in this specific case.

It might be me, but from what I can tell from a lot of lines being quoted here in Merritt's defense, *they're* pretty melodramatic as well. In which case, what is more important, the song or how it is sung? ;-)

But is that enough reason to care? I realize I'm having (self-amused) fun by bringing up these points, but still, I seem to have moved from a point last year where I believed people really did care about the MFs to now, where I'm actually not so sure about that anymore. I don't doubt anyone's sincerity here, I should note, but there's something odd about this debate that seems to be focusing less about Merritt and his work and more about how to read him. And surely the answer to that question is -- however the hell you want to.

But what I was about to post was this:

Actually, the more I think about it, part of the thrill of his material is that it essentially dares you to reject his texts, dares you to assume he's kidding -- much of the enjoyment I take from his lyrics lies in the fact that his authorial stance allows him to lay out lines of such straightforward clarity that they seem almost taboo if interpreted as "sincerity." (The taboo, of course, being the long-running post-Elvis "Thou shalt not employ formal rhetorical devices in popular music.") I'm not levelling this charge at anyone here, but I feel as if I've met quite a few people -- Mag Fields fans and haters alike -- whose opinions on Merritt are solely based on their inability to take certain tropes seriously: they either find him wonderfully funny/clever or insufferably funny/clever because it's not occurred to them that his more surprising metaphors may not be intended as humor. But I'm going to resign from this thread and take that thought home to work on it some more, because I feel like there's something to it -- some sort of rebellion-through-structure thing -- that is key to my appreciation of a whole lot of different bits of music.

As a specific response to the standard lyrical criticisms, I'd submit 69 Love Songs' "Meaningless," one of the finest fuck-you songs I've heard in years. But then again, this thread is tending toward a "Lyrical Aspects of 69 Love Songs" classic or dud rather than an actual Mag Fields classic or dud, so . . . let's talk about old stuff.

*adopts Bugs Bunny voice* Ain't I a STINKER? (As opposed to a Sinker, natch.)

some sort of rebellion-through-structure thing

"Hey hey, you think it's a puncture/Turning rebellion into structure."

*pause*

Er, anyway. A rebellion through structure? *considers* ...I'm leery of such approaches, or rather the way of phrasing that, seems to be the eternal problem of exchanging one ideology for another and back again.

Among some folks I know, that is precisely the answer. ;-) But that's your point as well, natch. I guess anything could be rebellion, but that implies there's something to rebel *against* -- and with me and my r.s. nature, I'd argue that's chasing at shadows. I wouldn't so much see it as rebelling against something as reacting to it -- the idea of rebelling being a self-contained construct.

Musician to self: "Lo! I respond to the tyranny of presumed unfettered emotion!"

Outside viewpoint: "A tyranny existed?"

Maybe i'll post something longer tomorrow. i'm lost for words, all you dud-sayers.

We're evil that way. Death to consensus! ;-)

It might be me, but from what I can tell from a lot of lines being quoted here in Merritt's defense, *they're* pretty melodramatic as well.

Well, yeah, that was sort of my point. That once you get past the concept and the cleverness it's the same old same old.

So your article rebelling against the 'indie consensus' on Merritt was what, exactly? ;)

P.S. Mark, the third disc is almost certainly the weakest.

P.P.S. I can't recommend Merritt's Future Bible Heroes side-project highly enough; I actually like their album Memories Of Love as much as 69 Love Songs and more than any of the other MF albums.

I was briefly elated to see all the attention that 69 got, but it soon became apparent that the gushing press was just pissing people off. This is why i rarely read music press any more. listen to the bloody music. mp3 and internet wins.

I couldn't get past disc 1 of 69 for ages because it was so wonderful. then weeks later i tried the second disc -- also wonderful. third disc turned out to be a bit wobbly. (seems to be the conventional view too, huh?)

I'm still looking forward to the first time i hear "Take Ecstasy With Me" in a club. stomping! (despite sounding a bit like a raved-up z-cars theme tune)

Well I prefer it to the second one... Come on, it has 'Meaningless' (which tears me up ever time, or does it put me into a state of 'no one touch me' catatonia? I forget which), 'Yeah! Oh Yeah!' (melodrama par excellence - the best duet of its kind since the Specials' 'I Can't Stand It') and 'Queen of the Savages' (ridiculous, possibly offensive lyric, but I can't help loving it. I think it's all about the TUNE, shock horror!). Yeah, it's bollocks that lyrics are Merritt's only gift. Magnetic Fields melodies reverb around my head all the time.

Disc 3 is the worst, yes. Bringing up a few good tracks (they're all good, in their ways) doesn't affect that judgment.

>>> Merritt taking utterly seriously what others would assume to be a joke. On 69 Love Songs the magic within the songs is not lyrical, but rather the mediation between the song as an intensely formal structure and equally intense, heartfelt performances of those songs.

I *kind* of agree with all this... but the trouble is the rhetoric of inversion: the MFs are *either* ironic *or* heartfelt. In fact, I think, they are sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both or undecidable, sometimes You, The Listener, Decide - ie;. we don't need an all-embracing description of the tone of *every* MFs moment, cos they're not all the same.

>>> Songs like "Book Of Love" or "Papa Was A Rodeo" would be completely naff in the hands of anyone else, but Merritt and his helpers invest them with such feeling that they transcend their own sense of craft. It's the transcendance that makes it such an emotionally affecting album - it often feels like the Fields are *covering* the songs as opposed to merely performing them, reimagining them as something grander than what they were on the page and layering them with new, almost unbearably personal resonances (the rostered vocalist policy doesn't hurt in this regard).

Sure, this covers idea is great, very suggestive. But there are still two different kind of 'sincerity' at work in your argument: 1) = 'emotionally sincere about the lyrics, etc'; 2) 'sincere craftsmanship - taking "The Song" very seriously - being serious (but also funny) about an investigation of pop history'. They're both fine, and both present at different times, but interestingly different (and I hadn't quite identified 2) until you brought it up).

I'm looking for a concluding thought (for me, not for everyone else, of course) on this, trying to sum it up... I think it's that 69LS suggests that there are many ways to one's heart - through the head, through the feet; through musical texture, through lyrical subtlety; through complexity and wryness, but also through simplicity amidst that ('I love it when you give me things'). And those many ways are (possibly) only multiplied by the many things that many listeners can do with the songs. The record is so big that it doesn't need to be about intellect *or* emotion - it can be about both at different times, and about their interrelations and occasional identity.

*chuckle* Something I probably wouldn't write now. Individual statements that say or imply musical truth is nonexistent seem much more to my taste at present...

Upon reflection, what I find most interesting of all was that most of the press seemed to salute him for his influences rather than his results. I mean, it's great that he obviously likes a lot of different music, that's completely up my street, but there's no automatic corollary saying that therefore his music must by virtue of that succeed. This wasn't a universal approach by writers, of course, but I saw it more than once, and struck me as a strange sort of wish- fulfillment.

I always liked "Meaningless" as one of the best songs on the set but it never struck me as more than cruelly funny.

Re old stuff: Get Lost is the only SM I don't feel a little embarrassed about now. Even at my most 69LS-infatuated I always preferred it. I still don't ever play it though. Nice tunes and arrangements. The first two songs are especially good. The lyrics are simpler and don't dominate the music. I never really liked Charm of the Highway Strip that much other than "Born On a Train."

It might just be that the MF are dealing in statements I don't really need to hear at the moment, as Sterling feels. In retrospect, it seems a little strange that I would have made that big a deal over what is essentially a retro-80s project.

Oh, you should hear Stevie T sing it. People still weep at the memory.

Good thread, this.

It wasn't just the press - I noticed a lot of my friends and acquaintances doing it (and by "a lot" I mean the 5 people I know who like Stephin Merrit). It was like, "Oh, you should like it, he takes influences from this this and this!" And I'm like, yes, well, Limp Bizkit take influences from this this and this that are all good but I think that Limp Bizkit are shit, why is this different? They never had much of an answer besides "But he's so clever!" which isn't an answer at all.

going through youtube, the live performances in the last few years do seem to have gone up a notch. they've brought back some of the synths & electric guitar & drum machines that they'd steadily avoided live for years due to merritt's hearing problems, so they must have found a way to make that work at last.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT1iKcd7PGA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHldXhiowDY

On the 50 Song Memoir tour he was in a kind of soundproof booth (fairly inconspicuous as part of the set), which allowed the band to approximate the album's instrumentation around him, and it was thrilling for me to finally see them perform live with synths, even if it was just songs from, you know, 50 Song Memoir. Merritt wasn't even part of the Future Bible Heroes tour a few years earlier.

Lmao, that's the up a notch stuff? Christ

Distortion is an effort to bring a different sort of sonic density back. It fails as it's already been done better, despite the odd nice moment

they've been entirely acoustic live for ages, bringing back the drum machine makes a big difference!

When did they ever have a drum machine? All the times I saw them relatively early Claudia was playing drums. A la this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzmQg15Mf58

Yeah Claudia was always the drummer! Is she not now?

I think it was around "Get Lost" when they dropped the drums, she switched to piano and they went full chamber-pop.

I'm not going to try and psychoanalyse Realism, but the extent of its regression to campfire twee - the sheer truculence of its withdrawal from anything resembling depth or complexity - is almost charming

Neurodivergent songwriters are often expected to cleave to expected paths of progress, development, complication and so forth, and when they don't, people often turn on them, as I've kind of been doing, but I'm gonna hand it to Merritt here, he's doing whatever the fuck he wants and trashing the brand, well fine y'know, fine

well i mean from the studio versions, they very rarely had live drums on record in the first place in the 90s

oh my god

I wasn't ready for how well my Realism comments paved the way for Love At The Bottom Of The Sea

he is unchained. unburdened. free

this is GLORIOUS omg

yep, on second listen I think I can firmly establish my great TMF trilogy: Charm, Holiday, Sea

I do not expect to be liked, nor understood, but there it is

Neurodivergent songwriters

????

He has said that he may be on the autism spectrum.[29][30]

have slightly calmed down re: LATBOTS - it isn't as good as the prime stuff, but I still find it a strikingly effective expression of creative freedom and full of little sonic delights

Oh I didn't know that about Merritt

good post that explains my great liking for Holiday - it isn't 'well recorded' or expensive-sounding (69LS feels MUCH more expensive) but it is a bedroom synth-layering masterpiece
if anything, The Charm... has an even more astonishing sound-world, with a sort of bizarro alt-country thrown in amongst the twinkling, meshing anti-pop
OTM, those are def my two favorite MF records for similar reasons, followed closely by Distortion, which is I think a perfect execution of its concept (Stephin Merritt songs + the sonic palette of Psychocandy)

He has said that he may be on the autism spectrum.[29][30]

Lots of people say this - about themselves and others.

It may be wise to be cautious and circumspect in applying these terms to people when full diagnoses are not available.

idk, cinical diagnostic criteria for most spectrum disorders were not available until very recently, so lots of adults who showed obvious spectrum traits as children went undiagnosed. if there are adults who believe they fit the profile & it helps explain challenges they have faced or continue to face & self-identify as being on the spectrum, but have little incentive to seek a formal diagnosis, then there's no need to be overly circumspect in applying these terms imo.

Finding 50 Song Memoir to be grand fun

Yeah, I kind of love it now. Particularly the stretch from Hustle 76 to Dreaming in Tetris, which is almost 100% solid, but there some winners on either side of that too.

"'69: Judy Garland" is great; I play it for my Gay Life & Culture class when I cover Stonewall.

Had a blast seeing them in Amsterdam yesterday. Claudia isn't there for this tour and that did feel like a gap on stage but the instrumentation was excellent nevertheless. They played 30 songs in one and a half hour (obviously including several short songs from Quickies, but most of their songs aren't long anyway), I was pleasantly surprised with some excellent picks from Holiday: Desert Island, The Flowers She Sent & The Flowers She Said She Sent; Take Ecstasy With Me - so good!

Someone posted their first show from 1990 recently (as well as another from 1990 on their channel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn8OrCNapZQ

Wow, thanks!! Other early live TMF videos from that same uploader:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvRRPNhkKo4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0hcyZ0ep0w

And there's even a little TMF after this Swirlies show (the link brings you right to the TMF stuff):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-N73NEMlAc

So in addition to Stephin, Claudia and Sam, I think that's Johny Blood on tuba (only in the "first show" video), Nell Beram on guitar, and Phylene Amuso on bass.

Ah that last video (Swirlies) should've started at 38:58 - so just go to that time for the TMF content.

!!!

EXCITING NEWS! In celebration of the 25th anniversary of 69 Love Songs, we'll be doing a limited run of shows next year in which we will perform all 69 songs in order over 2-night residencies in March-April 2024.

Sign up for the presale now: https://t.co/IDdshJvOVQ pic.twitter.com/yFBO1n99v0

— The Magnetic Fields (@TheMagFields) June 22, 2023

Sadly no LD Beghtol, who died in 2020. Did they ever say what happened, Covid or something else?

Never saw cause of death spelled out

https://www.chickfactor.com/rip-ld-beghtol-splendid-butterfly/