Waxing Lyrical #1: Stephin Merritt

Even before hearing one of his songs, I was aware that Stephin Merritt was the greatest lyricist of our time. Although I have no idea how I came by that opinion. Presumably it was by the same cultural osmosis that informs us all that Daydream Nation is Sonic Youth's “best” album (even though it's actually Sister). However, my first proper encounter with Merritt's work in The Magnetic Fields didn't quite back this up. Following a punt on the then-newly released i the best response I could muster to the record was mild intellectual appreciation, or admiration for a witty turn of phrase here and there – such as the innocent yet saucy "Like a kitten up a tree/needs a fireman to rescue it/so your fireman I will be/and I'll really get in to it". As a whole the album left me cold.

Although in my defence it is arguably their worst. More unforgivable was my attitude towards their magnum opus 69 Love Songs, which I didn't even acknowledge on release, being too busy zoning out to Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor to care about anything so trivial as lyrics (or love for that matter), and only coming across it years later thanks to a spending spree in the discount record store by my office. While I'd love to say that this time I got it straight away, I didn't – I was still that (now slightly overgrown) teenager who was too cynical to listen to love songs, and yet conversely found the notion of insincerity in music distasteful; with so much of the album revolving around pastiche, I could only tolerate it in small doses. As with i there were plenty of moments where I could admire the lyrical skill or daring (Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits could be the only song to ever tackle the bizarre world of furry-fetishism and, incredibly for the permanently sardonic Merritt, it doesn't even point judgment), but, rather missing the point, I was convinced it was all too long for its own good and back on the shelf/unplayed in my iTunes library it went.

As to how I learnt to stop sneering and love 69 Love Songs? I'm afraid we're going to have to take a detour through my romantic history. On the plus side, that shouldn't take too long.

I was lead to believe by the movies, or at least those movies that I discovered on late night Channel 4 that served as something of a minor sexual awakening, growing up gay is a transgressive act in itself; one that will involve some sort of noble struggle against intolerance, with a redeeming ending in which love conquers all, or at least everybody learns something. That's not how my experience of it went though; instead it was mostly just boring (hence those Mogwai records – I wasn't interested in listening to people going on about all those exciting experiences I should have been having). Consequently, I didn't have my first full-on romance in my teens like one's supposed to (like chickenpox, it's less damaging when contracted at a younger age), instead having to wait until I was in my twenties to properly fall for someone.

Not that I'm going to bore you with the details, instead let's fast-forward through eighteen months of (slightly pretentious) dating, conversations by turns enlightening (him) and nervous (me) and awkward bedroom fumblings (me again), and pick up when things started getting noticeably more strained. I should have probably had an inkling of what was coming, particularly when he started talking about other guys he'd been seeing, but still, getting dumped in favour of a younger, more confident, more super-gay (and at that point, more employed) guy by e-mail (“but we could still be friends”) wasn't something I was expecting.

My response to abrupt rejection was to do as my teenage self would have done and retreat back to bed with my record collection for company. But this time that just didn't cut it anymore – the droney, dreamy post-rock records that had previously been so enveloping now felt inadequate, and so much else seemed cruelly indifferent.

Until, I heard the baritone croon: "Let this be the Epitaph for my heart / Cupid put too much poison in the dart..." Whether it was from a hazy memory, or just a lucky spin of iTunes shuffle I don't remember, what I do remember is the instant connection I felt with that lyric. From there I moved outwards through the rest of 69 Love Songs' sprawling length, and, because even a record that vast couldn't quite stand-up to months of constant, devoted listening, I acquired every other album Merritt had put his fingers on as further emotional crutches.

Arguably what raises Merritt's lyrics up from the merely great into the pantheon of genius is that while taken as a whole they're the wittiest accounts of self-awareness (and self-loathing) you're likely to find in pop, in isolation so many lines seem entirely sincere, borderline cloyingly so. Meaning that the heartbroken hipster can very much have their cake and eat it; taking solace in each lovesick utterance, but also having a crucial sense of distance to be aware of how ridiculous that is. You couldn't ask for a better example of self-mocking wallowing (but wallowing all the same) than I Don't Want To Get Over You's "I could make a career out of being blue/I could dress in black and read Camus/smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth".

Perhaps, in part, this knowing distance comes from his ability to convincingly inhabit a range of characters (only the eccentric Scottish spinster of Wi' Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget feels like a step too far, but you still have to give him points for trying). It could be argued that it was a necessity for 69 Love Songs to keep himself and the listener from going mad, but really it was there both before - cf. the country-tinged storytelling of The Charm Of The Highway Strip - and after, with even the personal-pronoun fixated i, (seemingly the logical conclusion of pop lyricists' general self-obsession) still sneaking in more than a few character sketches.

If we're going to stretch the movie metaphor a bit further (and it seems like an appropriate thing to do; much of The Magnetic Fields' output relies on beautifully turned quotidian detail, but the former film student Merritt has also dragged more than a few images of Hollywood glamour into his work) he became my sassy/curiously sexless gay best friend ready to offer “you go girl!” style pep; implausibly wise barfly philosopher (I wasn't likely to meet one of those in the local Wetherspoons) and even impossibly cool role model as I desperately attempted to affect the casual callousness of I Thought You Were My Boyfriend's “I've always got/ten guys on whom I can depend/and if you're not mine/one less is nine” but was rather too awkward to pull it off.

If I was sensible I would have taken Merritt's overriding advice to heart – that romance is fine but not worth beating yourself up over – and moved on, but I wasn't, so I didn't and, even though it wasn't good for either my physical or mental health, I ended up agreeing to my ex's suggestion to "stay friends" (after all wasn't it my fault for expecting more of him than he had ever consented to give?). Until a night when I ended up as the third wheel on a date between him and his new boyfriend. While sat alone on the last train home, clutching to my heart the Magnetic Fields-stuffed iPod which I had taken to carrying around like a security blanket, I realised something had to change.

So, as a bit of a dick move, I bought him a copy of 69 Love Songs as a Christmas present. Yes, buying somebody one of the greatest records ever made is a strange sort of dick move, but in my own passive aggressive way it made sense. Partly it was intended as a kind gesture – I view the record as something of a homosexual sacred text, offering in less than three hours more bon mots than Oscar Wilde's entire written output while not even being half as insufferable. Mostly though, I wanted him to hear precisely what he'd put me through over the previous few months. Why launch into a (both ugly and risky) tirade about how unavailable he had been when I had lines both witty – “You know you enthral me/and yet you don't call me/it's making me blue/Pantone 292” – and painfully direct – “I might as well be loving air” – at my disposal? And, should he attempt to use logic and point out that we'd hardly had a proper relationship, I even had a last minute effort to save face: “I knew it all the time but now I must confess/Yes yes yes how deliciously meaningless”.

I haven't talked to him about the record, if he picked up what I was trying to say, or just thought I was desperately trying to come onto him (I was, but that's beside the point), and I don't think I'd want to now. I suspect if he ever put it on he was probably just slightly confused; records as sprawling as 69 Love Songs aren't the best way to make clear statements. Perhaps he only got as far as Punk Rock Love before turning it off (much as I love the album there's no excusing that one). His loss really.

Stories of failed love affairs are rather like holiday snaps; we all have them and they're only interesting if they're yours, and I suppose I should apologise for derailing what was meant to be an appreciation of Merritt's wordsmithery with mine. But at least this romance was significant in that it actually lead to a love both ongoing and deep...

...Perhaps, a bit too deep. I'd like to think that I'm more of an optimist than the famously misanthropic Merritt (although I think that he and my teenage self would have had a lot to talk about), but while I do hold out hope that the next guy I fall quite so hard for will be more reciprocative, I do slightly worry that I might doom the relationship before it even starts by compulsively soundtracking its every stage with a Magnetic Fields number (what other use is there for having them all committed to memory?).

But then lovers will come and go, 69 Love Songs (etc.) is forever.