Music: The Jolly Misanthrope

The life story of songwriter Stephin Merritt can be told in three anecdotes: 1) A few years ago, Merritt was getting out of a cab when he was struck on the head by a hailstone the size of a golf ball. He picked up the piece of ice and put it in his freezer, where it remains. 2) As a birthday present, Merritt once decided to give himself isolation. He avoided speaking to another human being for nearly 24 hours, then ventured out to a bookstore and ran smack into his ex-boyfriend. 3) Merritt was browsing in another bookstore when he stumbled across a title by the Scottish techno duo the KLF that promised to reveal the secrets of writing a No. 1 song. He raced to an ATM to get some cash, but when he returned, the book was gone. He has been unable to find it since.

No one would choose pain, misanthropy and terrible luck as the recurring themes of a life, but Merritt has at least put his misery to excellent use. He is the great tragicomic songwriter of his age--equal parts Cole Porter and Charlie Brown--and love is his unkickable football. "Maybe it's being gay," says Merritt, "but for me, everything related to love is so awkward, it's automatically funny. Just the idea of love is embarrassing to me. It's the equivalent of singing in the street." In 1999 Merritt and his band the Magnetic Fields released 69 Love Songs, a spectacular three-CD, genre-spanning survey that included titles like Absolutely Cuckoo and (Crazy for You But) Not That Crazy. The Magnetic Fields' new album, I (all the songs begin with the word or letter I), out May 4, has 14 more love songs that veer between tragically camp earnestness and deep romantic cynicism. On I Don't Believe You, Merritt sings: "So you quote love unquote me/Well, stranger things have come to be/But let's agree to disagree/Cause I don't believe you."

Merritt formed the Magnetic Fields in 1990, when he was sporadically taking classes at Harvard and writing an astrology column for a Boston gay weekly under the name Madame Cheva. He does not deny that he can be "deliberately unusual." The spelling of his first name comes from an attempt to trace the origin of his junk mail. He is prone to disconcertingly lengthy pauses in the midst of even the simplest sentences. His tiny Manhattan apartment is crammed with more than 90 musical instruments, all of which he can play. He rarely socializes. "I'm not a party type," says Merritt. "I go to cafes and bars and nightclubs and sit in the corner and write songs. It is unthinkable for me to go more than a few days without writing a song." He has had to start three other bands--the 6ths, Future Bible Heroes and the Gothic Archies--just to handle the compositional overflow.