50 Song Memoir
The Magnetic Fields' 50 Song Memoir chronicles the 50 years of songwriter Stephin Merritt's life with one song per year. Merritt sings vocals on all 50 songs and plays more than 100 instruments, from ukulele to piano to drum machine to abacus. Unlike his previous work, the lyrics are nonfiction—a mix of autobiography (bedbugs, Buddhism, buggery) and documentary (hippies, Hollywood, hyperacusis).
On this 5-disc musical memoir, Stephin Merritt has penned a song for each of the first 50 years of his life. His writing suggests that our deepest wisdom can be located in our most personal thoughts.
Stephin Merritt loves a good gimmick, doesn’t he? There was his Magnetic Fields magnum opus, 1999’s 69 Love Songs—exactly what it sounds like—and his subsequent experiments with form and instrumentation: i, Distortion, and Realism. While those latter gimmicks purposely limited Merritt, perhaps as a means to rein in…
50 song memoir, magnetic fields, album, review, Michael hall, stephin merrit
“I am the least autobiographical person you are likely to meet.” —Stephin Merritt, from the booklet for 50 Song Memoir.
Critics inevitably say that every new album made by Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields doesn’t match up to the vaulting ambition of his 1999 what-it-says-on-the-tin masterpiece, 69 Love Songs, but this one comes closest: five discs, more than 100 instruments, and one song for each year of his life.
The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt has put his own life into his work for pretty much the first time in his career on '50 Song Memoir'.
Many will wish this witty summation of a life had more consistently enduring songs.