{"id":13031,"date":"2024-02-16T01:08:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T00:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/?p=13031"},"modified":"2024-02-10T06:20:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-10T05:20:25","slug":"morning-songthe-magnetic-fields-the-book-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/2024\/02\/16\/morning-songthe-magnetic-fields-the-book-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning song#The Magnetic Fields #The Book of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stephin Merritt did not mean<\/em> any of what he wrote on 69 Love Songs<\/em>. He has been very clear about this over the years. 69 Love Songs<\/em> \u2014 the massive triple-disc, three-hour opus that celebrated its 20th anniversary this past Saturday \u2014 is a writing exercise, a parlor trick, a flex. It is not a work of personal expression. \u201cExpression is not the point,\u201d Merritt once told The Independent<\/em><\/a>. \u201cIf I need to express something, I express it in ordinary prose. Songwriting is not about expressing something.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In that same interview, Merritt puts it another way: \u201c69 Love Songs<\/em> is not remotely an album about love. It\u2019s an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love.\u201d If there\u2019s any authenticity to be found on 69 Love Songs<\/em>, it\u2019s what Merritt calls \u201cfraudulent authenticity\u201d \u2014 which is to say that it\u2019s not authenticity at all. But if 69 Love Songs<\/em> ever mattered to you \u2014 and there\u2019s a very good chance that it did \u2014 then that fraudulent authenticity does the trick anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for example, \u201cThe Book Of Love,\u201d still the best-remembered of those 69 love songs. Over a barely-there guitar strum, Merritt, his baritone croak of a voice in soft-swoon mode, gets into the concept of love itself, and into that of music itself: \u201cThe book of love has music in it. In fact, that\u2019s where music comes from. Some of it is just transcendental. Some of it is just really dumb.\u201d Talking to the AV Club<\/a> years later, Merritt said that he used \u201cThe Book Of Love\u201d to explore \u201cthe way the different clich\u00e9s interact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But two of my best friends chose \u201cThe Book Of Love\u201d as the first dance at their wedding. My friends didn\u2019t pick that song because they wanted to explore the way different clich\u00e9s interact. They picked it because it\u2019s a beautiful song. They picked it because it moved them. (One of those friends \u2014 his name is Marc Hogan, and he works for Pitchfork \u2014 tried to ask Merritt about the sentiment that so many people attach to \u201cThe Book Of Love\u201d as part of an onstage interview<\/a> a couple of years ago. Merritt, characteristically, https:\/\/www.stereogum.com\/2057552\/magnetic-fields-69-love-songs-turns-20\/reviews\/the-anniversary\/<\/a>was a dick about it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Posted from: https:\/\/www.stereogum.com\/2057552\/magnetic-fields-69-love-songs-turns-20\/reviews\/the-anniversary\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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