Stephin Merritt - Definition

Stephin Merritt (born 1966) is a New York singer-songwriter. He is the originator of the following bands:

• The Magnetic Fields
• The 6ths
• The Gothic Archies
• Future Bible Heroes

He briefly used the name The Baudelaire Memorial Orchestra as an attribution for a song written for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, entitled "Scream and Run Away". Further music was recorded for the audiobook versions of the series and is attributed to The Gothic Archies. Under his own name, he recorded and released the soundtrack to the film Eban and Charley.

Merritt, like his musical collaborator Claudia Gonson, is openly gay. His lyrics are known for bending and blurring the gender line; examples include the song "When My Boy Walks Down The Street", sung by a male vocalist, which contains the lyric "and he's going to be my wife". Other frequent themes in his lyrics include trains and railroads, the moon, dancing, eyes, and of course love.

Merritt has a Chihuahua named Irving, after Irving Berlin. He is Jewish by ethnicity (but non-observant), and was raised Buddhist by his counter-culture mother. He is a smoker, and is known to light a cigarette while performing on stage.

External links

• Stephin Merritt Biography (mixed English and German) (http://www.kutilek.de/musik/sm/biografie.en)
• The Village Voice - "As Hundreds Cheer" (http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/9948/tannenbaum.php)