The Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words

"I could make you pay and pay but I could never make you stay."

Album: 69 Love Songs [6th album]
Genre: Indie Folk, Chamber Folk
Recorded: 
Album Release: September 7th 1999
Single Release:
Length: 2:47
Producer: Stephin Merritt
Vocalist: LD Beghtol
Label: Merge Records

Official Audio


Live on NPR Tiny Desk in 2024

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: Over 19 million
YouTube Music: Over 4 million
NME's All Time Greatest Albums [2021]: #213
Rolling Stone's All Time Greatest Albums [2020]: #406

Instruments

Includes: banjo, cello, guitar,

Details

• The simplicity of the lyrics are a deliberate attempt to parody the uneding deluge of songs about love and heartbreak that dominate the charts. The excessive length of '69 Love Songs' works to the same end, as if the songwriter is proving how easy it is to write such works. 
  
  
• '69 Love Songs' is an album about love songs instead of love. Some of them are autobiographical but most are a playful take on the form that require a sense of humour to appreciate. People have a tendency to think of beautiful people when it comes to falling in love because our ideals are formed when we're young and no-one dreams of marrying the unfortunately faced. While beauty is more than skin-deep, it's a sad truism that the good-looking are rarely without a date come Friday night.
  
  It's inherently funny then to see a sad, dumpy middle-aged guy singing about loving another sad, dumpy middle-aged guy because it's so far removed from our expectations. Like a man swimming in the ocean while wearing a suit, something about it doesn't add up and we laugh despite ourselves. However, the laughter, or derision in this case is the point.
  
  The love songs on '69 Love Songs', even the title has a comedic edge, are a mask for a good-hearted mockery of the straight-forward, ever-present ode to feeling. There are endless tracks that rhyme "love" with "sent from above" or "heart" with "keep us apart", for example, or some other platitude, while unironically presenting themselves as deep works of emotional connection. It's the sort of thing that draws the ire of the jaded and is fun to laugh at every now and then.
  
  People who don't like the album see it as cynical sneering that derides the work of others, while those who do take it as a spoof that lambasts the cliches of the overdone love song. Whichever way you look at it the record displays strong songwriting and musicianship throughout. 
  
  
• Stephin Merritt wrote the album in a dingy gay bar in New York called Dick's. Dick's is a great name for a gay bar because it is, quite literally, full of dicks.
  
  
• '69 Love Songs' was inspired by the theatrical works of Stephen Sondheim.
  
  
• The album cover features a prominent 6 and a 9 next to each other. The numbers, are, of course, a mirror image. This is, a perhaps unintentional, visual representation of the albums core meaning, that it's the same but different. The albums is love songs, or songs about love songs, but not as you're used to hearing them. They're love songs with a twist.

Artwork