Stephin Merritt
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| Stephin Merritt | |
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| Background information | |
| Born | January 17, 1966 |
| Genre(s) | Indie pop Synth pop |
| Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter |
| Instrument(s) | Guitar Ukulele Keyboard |
| Associated acts | The Magnetic Fields The 6ths The Gothic Archies Future Bible Heroes |
| Website | Official website |
Stephin Merritt (born January 17, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter based in California (formerly New York City), best known as the principal singer and songwriter in the band The Magnetic Fields. He is distinctive for his untrained bass voice.[1]
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[edit] Musical projects
He created and played principal roles in the following bands:
He briefly used the name The Baudelaire Memorial Orchestra as an attribution for a song written for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, entitled "Scream and Run Away." Further music was recorded for the audiobook versions of the series and is attributed to The Gothic Archies. The Tragic Treasury was released by Nonesuch Records in October 2006 along with the 13th and final book of the series.
Under his own name, he recorded and released the soundtracks to the films Eban and Charley and Pieces of April. The soundtrack to the Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete & Pete featured many of his songs.
He and director Chen Shi-zheng have collaborated on three pieces of musical theatre; Orphan of Zhao (2003), Peach Blossom Fan (2004), and My Life as a Fairy Tale (2005). Select tracks from these works have been released on Nonesuch Records under the title Showtunes.
Additionally, he is one-third of the infrequent, live-only musical extravaganza the Three Terrors ensemble, whose other principal members include 69 Love Songs album's Dudley Klute and LD Beghtol; past themes of these performances have included: French pop, movie themes (including the title song from Deep Throat), intoxication, and New York. Kenny Mellman (of Kiki & Herb), James Jacobs, Daniel Handler, Jon DeRosa and others have performed with T3T at these sporadic gala events. Merritt was referenced in the Beulah song "Popular Mechanics for Lovers."
Stephin Merritt wrote and sang "I'm In a Lonely Way" in a television commercial for Volvo that aired in the Summer and Fall of 2007. He also performed "The Wheels on the Car"; both songs are available on iTunes.
[edit] Songwriting topics
Merritt is openly gay. His lyrics are known for bending and blurring gender lines; examples include the song "When My Boy Walks Down The Street," sung by a male vocalist, which contains the lyric "and he's going to be my wife." He is fascinated with the undead, often making veiled or explicit references to vampires. Other frequent motifs in his lyrics include trains and railroads, the age 17, the moon, dancing, cities, rain, blue eyes and faces, and love.
[edit] Personal life
Merrit was raised Buddhist by his counter-culture mother; he has never met his father, folk singer Scott Fagan,[2] who had a brief affair with Merrit's mother. Merrit himself attended the progressive Massachusetts high school, The Cambridge School of Weston and briefly attended NYU before moving back to Boston. He is a smoker, and is known to light a cigarette while performing on stage. He has worked as an editor for Spin Magazine and Time Out New York. Merritt has a Chihuahua named Irving, after Irving Berlin.
Merritt is known for having a dry personality, embracing a persona and life that is very different from the traditional rock star image. In a September 2005 interview conducted by The Onion's AV Club, alternative rock musician Bob Mould was reminded of an interviewer who once referred to Mould as "the most depressed man in rock." Mould's response was, "He's never met Stephin Merritt, obviously." Performances by The Magnetic Fields and his other projects are often more in a reserved "recital" format, rather than a traditional rock concert; Merritt is often quiet and unanimated during these shows. This is partially due to his disdain for applause; he typically covers an ear when the audience claps. This is attributed to a hearing problem that Merritt suffers from called hyperacusis, where any sound louder than normal begins to "feed back" in his head at increasingly louder volumes. As a result, Stephin also wears earplugs during performances.[3]
Merritt does not use linguistic qualifiers or linguistic placeholders such as "uh" or "er" to indicate that he is not done speaking, but instead simply pauses and stops speaking as he gathers his thoughts. This led one interviewer unfamiliar with this behavior to cut him off before he had finished answering a question.[4]
[edit] Solo releases
- Eban and Charley (Merge, 2002)
- Pieces of April (Nonesuch, 2003)
- Showtunes (Nonesuch, 2006)
[edit] References
- ^ Berlind, William. The Stephin Merritt Standard.
- ^ Conversations With Scott Fagan.
- ^ Creators at Carnegie.
- ^ Bartlett, Thomas. Irresistible force.
[edit] External links
- The House of Tomorrow - The official site of Stephin Merritt, The Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes, The 6ths, and The Gothic Archies
- Stephin Merritt Biography (mixed English and German)
- The Village Voice - "As Hundreds Cheer"
- The Distant Plastic Treehouse - "a hangout for Stephin Merritt fans"
- Stephin Songs - The music and lyrics of Stephin Merritt
- Stephin Merritt interview at musicOMH.com
- Stephin Merritt listens and responds to OMD's Architecture and Morality in Plazm Magazine
- Interview on The Onion's AV Club
- Stephin Merritt live on Good Day Atlanta
- Interview and video feature for NPR's Project Song, November 5, 2007
- photographer Phil Toledano's website: the inspired photograph for Merritt's song 'Man of a MIllion Faces'.
- set designer + prop stylist/maker Anne Koch designed 'baby-man' outfit for photograph inspiring Stephin Merritt's song 'Man of a Million Faces'
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