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The album was originally conceived as a grandiose musical revue. Stephin Merritt was sitting in a gay piano bar in Manhattan, listening to the pianist's interpretations of Stephen Sondheim songs, when he decided he ought to get into theatre music because he felt he had an aptitude for it. "I decided I'd write one hundred love songs as a way of introducing myself to the world. Then I realized how long that would be. So I settled on sixty-nine. I'd have a theatrical revue with four drag queens. And whoever the audience liked best at the end of the night would get paid", quoted in interview in San Francisco Bay Guardian.
While Stephin Merritt usually sings all lead vocals on Magnetic Fields albums, he needed to provide a richer variety of approaches across the nearly three-hour length of the album. Thus Merritt shares lead vocals with fellow band member (and manager) Claudia Gonson , as well as three guest vocalists: LD Beghtol , Dudley Klute and Shirley Simms . The basic quartet of musicians in The Magnetic Fields is also supplemented on a few songs with accordion and keyboard by novelist Daniel Handler (who interviews Merritt for the booklet that accompanies the US box set version of the album), and with electronic backing tracks by Chris Ewen .
The variety of 69 Love Songs also derives from the many song genres that Stephin Merritt raids and filters through his own gay miserablist sensibility. Merritt has said "69 Love Songs is not remotely an album about love. It's an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love", quoted in interview in The Independent. Some of the genres are obvious, as in the songs Punk Love, Love is Like Jazz, World Love and Wi' Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget. Other songs indirectly reference some of Merritt's favourite artists, including Fleetwood Mac (No One Will Ever Love You), Cole Porter (Zebra), Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits), The Jesus and Mary Chain (When My Boy Walks Down the Street), and Irving Berlin (A Pretty Girl is Like...).
Several of the songs bend genders as well as genres. For example: a male vocal sings "He's going to be me wife" (When My Boy Walks Down the Street); female vocals sing "bring me back my girl" (Acoustic Guitar) and "Should pretty boys in discos / distract you from your novel" (Come Back from San Francisco). Other common themes include place names (e.g. Dakota, Washington, DCWashington, DC officially the District of Columbia (also known as DC Washington and, historically, the Federal City is the capital city and administrative district of the United States of America. Residents of the city and its surrounding suburbs refer to, Lower East Side, North CarolinaNorth Carolina is a southern state in the United States. North Carolina is one of the thirteen colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution. It is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on th, ParisEiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. Paris is the capital and largest city of France. The city is built on an arc of the River Seine, and is thus divided into two parts: the Right Bank to the north and the smaller Left Bank to, VeniceVenice ( Italian Venezia German Venedig , the city of canals, is the capital of the region of Veneto, population 271,073 (2001). The city stretches across numerous small islands in a marshy lagoon along the Adriatic Sea in northeast Italy. The saltwater l), animals (e.g. bear, goldfish, jellyfish, rabbit, bat, dog, boa constrictor, cockroach), and -- in common with all Merritt's work -- dancing.