406. Magnetic Fields, "69 Love Songs"

 


Here is my reaction, in chronological order, to 69 Love Songs by Magnetic Fields:

Songs 1-15: This is cool! Really inventive.  Love "I Don't Want to Get Over You," which I've had in playlists for years.  Not surprised to learn that "The Book of Love" is a popular wedding song; it's lovely.

Songs 16-40: OK, wow, lot of genres here.  "Sweet-Lovin' Man" has a great hook, nice vocal melody, sung by Claudia Gonson, kinda alt-country vibe I guess?  "Papa Was a Rodeo" is interesting, but I'm not sure I'm completely taken with Stephin Merritt's basso profundo croak.  "Long-Forgotten Fairytale" is a straight-up 80's synth-pop.  

Songs 41-51: A lot of the songs are starting to sound the same now.  WOW, hold up, "Acoustic Guitar," which is played on, and about, an acoustic guitar (and also a girl who's gone) is absolutely lovely, plus it rhymes "mother of pearl" with "girl."  What a nice break from the mostly synth-pop and synth-pop-adjacent songs that make up the rest of the album.

Songs 52-68: "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!" is just great.  It's obviously their stab at shoegaze and it works.  Otherwise this is getting to be a slog now.  Let's just acknowledge that it is an amazing achievement to write 69 plausible songs and some of them aren't going to be as good as others, but at some points this really feels like the medley of semi-completed songs at the end of They Might Be Giants' Apollo 18.

Song 69: [Emerges, blinking, from the Magnetic Fields cave into a sunlit world.  I am free.]

Comments

  1. GGMarch 5, 2021 at 8:04 AM

    I can’t believe I only recently discovered the fact that you are doing this. Now I need to go back and read all the old posts. Thank you for your service

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TKMarch 5, 2021 at 9:04 AM

      Thanks for reading! I try not to flood Twitter with it, but maybe I need more outreach.

      Delete

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