69 Love Songs

Rolling Stone - 3 stars out of 5 - "...His grandiose, bare-assed lyrics can be catty, crude and sometimes full of sappy goo, but they usually contain a little universal truth....melodies that hark back to Eighties synth popper like Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark..." Q - 4 stars out of 5 - "...This is a boundlessly entertaining expose of what happens when you mix fine words with excellent melodies to make great songs." NME - Ranked #46 in NME's "Top 50 Albums Of The Year". CMJ - Ranked #16 in CMJ's "Top 30 Editorial Picks [for 1999] - "...a reminder that a finely rendered pop song, no matter how cynical, can approach the status of art." Spin - 10 out of 10 - "...a grand gesture and a brilliant joke; art about the most personal emotion stamped out in bulk; and a love offering in its own right....pop has not seen a lyricist of [Stephin] Merritt's kind and caliber since Cole Porter..." NME - 8 out of 10 - "...If he isn;t the greatest songwriter of his generation, he's certainly the greatest sponge." Alternative Press - 4 out of 5 - "...against all odds it shines form beginning to end....[Stephin] Merritt's most ambitious, eccentric and eclectic recording to date..." Melody Maker - 4 stars out of 5 - "...You'll find yourself immersed inthe richest of musical tapestries, spotlighting every single aspect of love, from infatuation to splitting up....This is approaching genius." Entertainment Weekly - "...69 elegant observations by a pop master, employing myriad genres, instruments, and neuroses. All charm, but by set's end, you're ready for more." - Rating: A Mojo - "...An album that could easily occupy your whole life with its witty, intellignet, infuriating, smug and brilliant ways, a dazzling mass of contradictions that you can't help but love..." Mojo - Ranked #59 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "Stephen Merritt's magnum opus." Paste - "[W]hile the dramatics are fun, the set's lasting power comes from how Merritt so consistently relates these brutal love stories with such an incredible economy of language."

As the sprawling magnitude of its cheeky title suggests, 69 Love Songs is Stephin Merritt's most ambitious as well as most fully realized work to date, a three-disc epic of classically chiseled pop songs that explore both the promise and pitfalls of modern romance through the jaundiced eye of an irredeemable misanthrope. A true A-to-Z catalog of touchingly bittersweet love songs that runs the gamut from tender ballads to pithy folk tunes to bluesy vamps, the sheer scope of the record allows all of Merritt's musical personas to converge -- the regular use of guest vocalists recalls his work as the 6ths, the romantic fatalism suggests the Gothic Archies project, and the stately melodies evoke the Future Bible Heroes. The whole is much greater than the sum of its parts, however -- for all of Merritt's scathing wit and icy detachment, there's a depth and sensitivity to these songs largely absent from his past work, and each one of these 69 tracks approaches l'amour from refreshing angles, galvanizing the love song form with rare sophistication and elegance. Naturally, given a project of this size there's the occasional bit of filler, but all in all, 69 Love Songs maintains a remarkable consistency throughout, and the highlights ("I Don't Believe in the Sun," "All My Little Words," "Asleep and Dreaming," "Busby Berkeley Dreams," and "Acoustic Guitar," to name just a few) are jaw-droppingly superb. Also available as three individual releases, 69 Love Songs was nevertheless conceived as a whole and is best absorbed as such, with all of its twists and turns taken in stride; despite its three-hour length, the music boasts the craftsmanship and economy that remain the hallmarks of classic American pop songwriting, a tradition Merritt upholds even as he subverts the formula in new and brilliant ways. ~ Jason Ankeny|