Have You Heard? #14: Stephin Merritt

Renowned for their ambitious and explorative sonic catalogue, infectious sense of haunting melody, and singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt’s signature baritone drawl, acclaimed US indie band The Magnetic Fields have been performing their seminal album ’69 Love Songs’ in its entirety on stages across the world, with their sights set on Bristol this September.

Released in 1999, ’69 Love Songs’ was a 3-disc masterwork which garnered the band widespread acclaim – from spots on multiple “best of” year-end lists by major US publications including the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post and more, to being cited as one of the “500 greatest albums of all time” by Rolling Stone in 2023. Written in its entirety by Stephin Merritt – who Spin have previously called “the Cole Porter of his generation”, the album features a wide variety of musical genres and is rife with earworms that remain catchy and poignant several decades on.

Ahead of The Magnetic Fields’ two-night extravaganza in celebration of the album’s 25th anniversary next month, we spoke to the band’s lead singer, founder and songwriter Stephin Merritt to find out more about the tour, his memories of Bristol and his love of Italo disco.

This isn’t your first time performing in Bristol – do you have any stand-out memories from the last time you were here?

The last time The Magnetic Fields played in Bristol – at Bristol Beacon, in fact, we had another two-night show where we were doing my autobiographical album, ’50 Song Memoir’.

In the middle of the show, a member of the audience stood up and shouted “that’s not funny!” – something that generally doesn’t happen at Magnetic Fields concerts!

You’ve been travelling around the world with The Magnetic Fields as part of a very special tour. What can you tell us about it?

So this is the ’69 Love Songs’ anniversary tour – it’s the 25th anniversary, and it’s kind of a variety show over three hours.

We don’t normally do the whole of ’69 Love Songs’ – we’re only doing it because it’s the anniversary tour, so we won’t be doing it for another 25 years…

What makes a great live music experience?

A great live music experience is where something unique happens and you feel like you were there.

Like when I saw Matthew Broderick in ‘The Producers’ and he completely forgot the lyrics to one of the songs and started swearing and saying “how do you expect me to remember the lyrics to this terrible song?”

…Poor Matthew Broderick, but it made for a great live experience!

You’re spending two nights with us this September for a very special performance of ’69 Love Songs’ in full – what should fans expect?

So it’s important to note about the ’69 Love Songs’ show that it takes two nights to hear it. We do not play all three hours in a row – there is a 22 hour intermission between the two halves.

Tragically, some people don’t realise this and have bought tickets only for night one, which means that if night two sells out, they’re gonna have to tell their grandchildren (25 years from now) that they only saw the first night…

What’s one artist that you’ve been listening to recently and can recommend?

I’ve been listening to Fun Fun, which is an Italo disco band from quite a while ago.

Most Italo disco bands were basically one-hit wonders, but Fun Fun have so many catchy songs that I would say they qualify as an album band like ABBA or Queen… or even The Magnetic Fields.