Stephin Merritt

One-man songwriting powerhouse, Abba fan, and key member of Magnetic Fields, Gothic Archies, Future Bible Heroes and the 6ths.

Many recurring themes show up in Stephin's songs. These include:

• Trains or railroads
• the moon
• roads, streets or highways
• dancing
• rain
• eyes

All of the above themes each appear in at least 12 of Stephin's songs. Occasionally at the same time.

Stephin has also named a Pantone shade, Carolyn Eve Green.

Update 17/5/2001: I have just met the great Stephin. He is the most gorgeous man in the world. So small and shy. I think I may have freaked him out slightly with my gushing.

Many of Steven's albums take form of tribute and thematic as well. His second album: The Wayward Bus takes the form as a kind of tribute to Phil Spector Master of "The Wall of Sound." Other albums, like The Charm of the Highway Strip carries a theme of travel, and (oddly enough) Vampires.

A few of his songs also deal (in a vonnegut-esque way) with a story (of sorts) told from a completely removed narrator. Mostly stories told by the dead. He's infected with an obsequious dry wit, cynicism and at the same time, a hopeless romanticism that still makes my dried up overused heart cry a little.

Stephin Merritt stands about five feet tall, is besotted with Irving, his chihuahua (named for Irving Berlin), and is possessed of an impossibly evocative smoky bass voice that he somehow manages to hate. He only started singing after Susan Anway, his first vocalist, ran off to become a dental sculptor.

He wrote most of 69 Love Songs in the tiny gay bar less than two blocks from my former place of residence. "Blue You" could make a stone weep.

Also, his name is never, ever spelled Steven.