Sunday, June 18, 2017

#430: The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs (1999)


Zack: I have previously established my opinions on double albums, namely that an artist should never, ever make one. So I’m going to assume any readers can guess my thoughts on a triple album. Hint: This isn’t a situation where a negative multiplied by a negative makes a positive. It is pure subtraction. Over the course of this entire 3-hour behemoth, I gave 10 songs 5 stars. In terms of raw numbers, that’s incredible. But then you realize that that is 14.5% of the total album. 69 Love Songs leaps around stylistically, sometimes following up a country-esque love ballad with a synthy pop song. And I am totally fine with that. If you’re trying to create an album about love songs, you can’t ignore the fact that people have used different genres to perform such songs since basically music was invented. I liked songs from all sorts of genres on this record. The problem was that I had to sift through so much other stuff to get to the songs I liked. It was daunting. I broke the listening up between two sessions, and I left both feeling equally exhausted. Love songs shouldn’t be so tiring.
Favorite Tracks: How to Say Goodbye; Come Back from San Francisco; No One Will Ever Love You

Emily: Listening to this album was a marathon. I broke it up over three sessions over the course of two weekends (with several little breaks in the middle), and I still feel exhausted. 69 Love Songs feels like an entire discography, but it's just one overloaded album. There are certainly some lovely songs on here, but they get overshadowed by everything else.  At a certain point it's just self-indulgent to pack an album to the gills with minute-long novelty tracks to get to your requisite 69 songs. A better approach would have been to cut it down to 12 Really Good Love Songs, and leave the 69-based snickering in the studio.
Favorite Tracks: I Don't Want to Get Over You; No One Will Ever Love You; I Can't Touch You Anymore

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