69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields

69 Love Songs, the Magnetic Fields' sixth album, came out on Merge on September 7, 1999, and the title is a plain statement of fact: three volumes, 69 love songs, every one of them written by the band's leader Stephin Merritt. Merritt, who also produces, sings and plays a good share of what you hear on Magnetic Fields records, turns what could have been a stunt into a sprawling catalog of romance in all its moods, from swooning to sardonic.

It stands as the band's best-known work, and "Papa Was a Rodeo" is the song that keeps pulling listeners into the maze. What came next was a change of gear: i, the first of a trilogy made without synthesizers.

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