As far as modern classics go, there is a lack of recognition in the media of things that aren't new and cutting edge. Things as timeless as the Magnetic Fields 1999 triple album 69 Love Songs deserve more praise, especially as the passage of time has seen the touching sentiments of these lyrics get more and more irrelevant in our age. Romance and chivalry are old hat, every relationship seems to have a Southern California twist to it nowadays, yet the Magnetic Field's Stephin Merrit and crew seem to have been sheltered from the fray with just their friends and lovers, Leonard Cohen albums, weed, and the complete Shakespere to keep them busy.
The concept of this album is 69 different love songs (whittled down from 100) about any kind of love (i.e. sex, breakups, happiness, crushes, stalking, animal love, love of objects, etc). The shifts in style and genre are disorienting at first but welcome after getting used to it. The main influence I can pick out is definitely Leonard Cohen, in Stephin Merrit's super low voice to the darkly funny, sad, well written lyrics.
These songs are deep and truthful, to the point of hearing one that cuts to deep may bring you to tears. There are 69 of them, there is probably at least a few that you'll have that experience with. All it took was one for me to get hooked and it happened to be "The Book Of Love," a song about the cliches of love becoming something you can overlook when you're going through the motions with a person so special they make the motions feel new again.
I just bought what they're selling hardcore after that, scouring the album to find another gem that I relate to as much. I found them a few songs down the tracklist with both "The One You Really Love" and "A Pretty Girl Is Like..." which operate on me in different ways. The first almost cuts me too deep with it's lyrics of a girlfriend preoccupied with someone else (in this case someone dead). It's beauty is in its dark humor and slightly pissed off narrator who reduces the object of her affection from "the one you really love" to "the corpse you really love."
"A Pretty Girl Is Like..." is just plain brilliant writing. "A pretty girl is like a violent crime/if get it wrong you could do time/but if you get it right it is sublime/I'm so in love with you girl/It's like I'm on the moon/I can't really breathe but I feel lighter" Bomb.
Another cool thing is that you find songs that you relate to but you know someone else who the song may as well have been written for. Such is the case with this song, but I won't divulge any names.
Well I got shit to do but I'll give you some more songs I love off this album so as to nudge you into buying/downloading it. If you can't take the album as a whole (understandable, I can't really either) just make a mix of the highlights, which i think is necessary to do with any bloated album like this or the Clash's Sandanista!, etc.
There's way more but I can't find them online you're just gonna have to get the whole damn thing!
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