The Magnetic Fields

Stephin Merritt certainly doesn’t fit the singer/songwriter stereotype. Had he been born 50 years earlier, he’d have been locking elbows with George Gershwin and Hoagy Carmichael; 25 after that and he could have been a staff writer at Broadway’s Brill Building. When The New York Observer hailed him as “the greatest living American songwriter” after the release of 1999’s audacious 69 Love Songs—an unprecedented exercise in pop showmanship that attempted to reassess representations of love in the Western songwriting canon—they weren’t fitting him for Bob Dylan’s crown as much as they were dusting off Cole Porter’s. But even as critics have been quick to lay accolades at the feet of “Stephin Merritt, the artist,” they’ve been equally baffled by the enigmatic nature of “Stephin Merritt, the man.”

As the driving force behind no fewer than four sporadically recording bands, most notably the acclaimed Magnetic Fields, Merritt is conversant in nearly every recent popular music form. His songs carry the marks of a true craftsman: perfectly formed melodies, smartly conceived arrangements and lyrics both darkly probing and sardonic. And, more than any other songwriter of his generation, Merritt has been able to capture the human condition in various stages of undress, while rarely dipping into the stock metaphors and cheap laughs that plague similarly insightful scribes. In short, this is the work of someone who sees the world with an incisive eye, someone who catalogs the imperfections and moral frailties of human interaction. Accordingly, you might expect Merritt’s soul to emit wisdom and good vibes; however, he hasn’t always extended to others the grace their delicate humanity required.

In addition to his prodigious output, Merritt has left behind a long trail of frazzled interviewers and affronted former acquaintances who are convinced he loathes them. He can be a bit prickly at times, as likely to hang up the phone on you for a stupid question as he is to scold you for using “like” when you mean “as.” Reading past interviews yields a few themes for conducting a successful discussion with him: Don’t flatter him, don’t make small talk, and—most importantly—never interrupt him. But could a guy who combined goth rock and bubblegum music under the moniker The Gothic Archies be all that bad?

Entering a small Chelsea café on a Manhattan spring morning, Merritt hardly looks like the Napoleon he’s made out to be. Short and balding, carrying two cased instruments in one hand, he scans the room without expression until I flag him down. Forgetting myself, I try to exchange pleasantries, an attempt which is politely ignored. And while his demeanor isn’t particularly offensive, he seems far more comfortable quizzing me on the texture of my grapefruit juice and on how my tape recorder works than in making real conversation. What is it about him then that is so off-putting to so many? After a few minutes I begin to understand. Stephin Merritt is not like most people.

Most of us, inarticulate creatures that we are, speak with an undignified mix of partially cogitated statements, “ums” and “you knows.” Not Merritt—whose words, delivered in a rarely broken monotone, are measured as carefully as the verse in his songs. Long answers are anathema, like a chorus with one too many lines.