69 Love Songs

Merritt wrote the songs while working in a New York cabaret bar, where he had the idea of a grand drag revue, and was a Time Out New York critic then. It was planned as 100 songs, cut to 69 on three CDs of 23. It was recorded in various New York locations, sometimes his apartment, with rotating players including Daniel Handler, and many vocals went to Gonson and LD Beghtol, with Shirley Simms and Dudley Klute among the others. Charles Ives' 114 Songs was an inspiration, along with Fleetwood Mac, Billie Holiday and OMD. Merritt said it is not remotely an album about love, but about love songs. LD Beghtol wrote a 33 1/3 book on it in 2006, and the band performed all 69 songs in order over two nights on seven occasions.

Metacritic scored it 88: Spin gave 10 of 10, with Douglas Wolk calling it Merritt's masterwork, Pitchfork 9.0, and the Village Voice an A-plus, second in the 1999 Pazz and Jop poll behind Moby's Play; the Guardian's Betty Clarke praised its tenderness, humor and bloody-minded diversity. Rolling Stone ranked it 465th in 2012 and 406th in 2020, and NME placed it 213th. By 2015 the box set had sold about 83,000, per SoundScan; it reached 170 on the UK chart in 2000. The Line of Best Fit's Erik Thompson gave it 10 of 10 in 2016, calling it a masterwork that is at once both universal and eternal. Stereogum wrote that it seems to matter more to its fans than to its creator. We did not retrieve the tracklist with times.