Stephen Merritt

In Sight Out

Stephin Merritt is no typical memoirist. In April, the Magnetic Fields singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist sat down with Pitchfork Senior Staff Writer Marc Hogan for a conversation in front of an audience at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Though the Magnetic Fields’ new album, 50 Song Memoir, consists of a song for each of the first 50 years of his life, Merritt isn’t a tell-all artist; in interviews, he has long been known for his acerbic reticence, often marked by lengthy pauses. Over the course of an hour, however, Merritt waxed wise and witty, reflecting on the nature of art, the challenges for a notoriously anti-autobiographical performer in finally telling his own life story, and the evolving meaning of the Magnetic Fields’ classic “The Book of Love.”