12:12 Tune of the Day: The Book of Love — The Magnetic Fields
Posted By Amanda Lee on September 30, 2009
Melodically, “The Book of Love” should be the kind of song you play at your wedding—sweet and soft with a chorus that swells in all the right places. But it’s not a cheesetastic love song. It’s a tongue-in-cheek look at all the fripperies that compose our ideas of love—swelling musical refrains, dancing under moonlight, goosebumps, all the mythologies that come up in fairy tales and Disney films when two lovers lock eyes for the first time [or ever]. Stephin Merritt isn’t interested in all that, dismissing it for its mundanity and irrelevance. All he’s interested in is interacting with his sweetheart in simple, uncontrived ways. The language is devoid of intentionally beautiful extended metaphors; everything is written exactly the way someone would talk in conversation. This isn’t Juliet or Helen of Troy he’s talking about here; it’s just a person he happens to think is pretty damn wonderful.
[EDIT: Courtney was kind enough to point out that his name is indeed "Stephin," not "Stephen," as Amanda Lee initially posted {a lapse in fact-checking skills or less-than-nimble typing, so embarrassing}. Thanks for the heads-up—I'll do better in the future, I swear.]
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A friend of mine actually did play it at her wedding. Or at least, an instrumental version of it, which nearly ruined it for me.
I don’t think Merritt (first name spelled Stephin, incidentally) is dismissing the fripperies of love, as you put it. This song seems to me to be more about how once you’re in love, the cliches become both unavoidable but also somehow more palatable, particularly when presented via your lover/interlocutor.
Have mercy on our souls, have you heard Peter Gabriel’s cover? Now there’s a trainwreck!
I wonder if Courtney and I were in the same place, because I was also at a wedding where that was the first dance song. It was even more impressive because the rest of the music at the wedding was pretty ordinary. Great song…..