Con 4 votos:
1.20 MY SENTIMENTAL MELODY
"'But my sentimental melody... / will ring in your ears... /
bringing a tear to your eye / Goodbye'
My Sentimental Melody is another song which is literally (almost) a song about a song (cf. The Way You Say Good-Night, also sung by LD Beghtol). In this case the love song is an instrument of revenge. It works after, and because, the singer has gone.
The song is driven by a fan organ, the electric motor of which can be heard at the beginning and end of the song.
Apparently the song was written ten years before 69 Love Songs was released.
LD Beghtol, who sings the song, writes:
The vocals were recorded in two takes, since I couldnât quite get the rhythm right â and never did â on the second verse. Claudiaâs "Lawrence Welk Show" backing vocals are a marvel, and I get all tingly when the fan organ clicks off at the very end.
Flare (one of LD's other bands) used to do this song live, right when 69 Love Songs came out, in a terrific string version with a huge piano cadenza. We soon dropped it from our live shows when I burst into tears in the middle of it one night at Mercury Lounge and had to stop the song when I noticed most of the band and the audience (including Stephin Merritt) were sobbing along with me.
American composer Aaron Copland also wrote a piano piece called Sentimental Melody (Slow Dance) in 1926."
1.22 SWEET-LOVIN' MAN
"According to the 69 Love Songs booklet, Sweet-Lovin' Man was written at the time of The Magnetic Fields' 1994 album The Charm of the Highway Strip but didn't fit with the rest of that album.
In several ways this song is consciously out of character with other Stephin Merritt compositions:
"The original idea, probably obvious, was to write a song with a title I would never use."
It has a slow fade whereas the majority of songs end more or less abruptly.
Notwithstanding the 'million years of rain', the song is happy and positive.
In a feature in the now-defunct Milkmag, Don Leibold wrote:
Claudia Gonson is Stephen [sic] Merritt's longtime friend and manager. She sings six songs on 69 Love Songs, including a soaring number called Sweet-Lovin' Man. Merritt hears the song as a kind of Loretta Lynn tribute, though other ears might hear it as a bombastic eighties ballad à la Bonnie Tyler.
Shirley Simms says that there is general agreement that she should have sung this, but at the time it was assigned to Claudia for reasons of balance of different singers."
2.20 THE SUN GOES DOWN AND THE WORLD GOES DANCING
"Stephin Merritt explains in the 69 Love Songs booklet that Chris Isaak was originally invited to sing The Sun Goes Down And The World Goes Dancing for an album by The 6ths, but was not available. "
3.19 THE NIGHT YOU CAN'T REMEMBER
"This song brings together the traditions of:
-love during wartime (though with a different twist to Abigail, Belle of Kilronan)
-gender switch (it is sung by a man, but clearly with the voice of a woman addressing a man â cf. Acoustic Guitar), and
-drinking/intoxication ('the night you can't remember / the night I can't forget').
The combination is exploited for comic effect: 'You said I was terrific, it / meant zilch to you, ah, but I / have our marriage certificate / 'n I'll keep it till I die' and 'you've got vague presentiments / and I've got little Junior.'
The Rockettes are a renowned dance organisation, linked to Radio City Music Hall, which has been around since the 1920s. The line 'It's true, we flew to Paris, dear / aboard an Army jet' might situate the song in the World War Two period since the Rockettes are known to have starred in USO Tours during the war. On a pedantic technicality â since 'jet' is obviously dictated by the rhyme â there were, however, no army jets capable of carrying passengers in service during World War Two. "
