Magnetic Fields

Certain Songs #1080: The Magnetic Fields – “The Death of Ferdinand De Saussure”

December 23, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: 69 Love Songs
Year: 1999

Since Ferdinand De Saussure died in 1913, the murder confessed to in the amazing second verse of this song probably didn’t happen.

He was a linguist who was a great contributor to what is called semiotics which — I think, cos I’m trying to boil this down from several wiki articles — is all about the relationship between a word (the signifier) and what it means (the signified). In Saussure’s mind, that relationship was completely arbitrary.

Certain Songs #1079: The Magnetic Fields – “Papa Was A Rodeo”

December 21, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: 69 Love Songs
Year: 1999

So, I was late to the 69 Love Songs party. I didn’t actually get it until the next year: months after it came out. I think at the time, everything I’d read about The Magnetic Fields indicated to me that I probably wouldn’t like them, even as 69 Love Songs became critically acclaimed. But you can’t hear everything.

So getting it was an accident: it was either a birthday or going-away present from a guy at work. And immediately became obsessed with figuring out what each of the 69 (nice!) songs was on about. Even then, it took me quite some time to hear the epicness of “Papa Was a Rodeo.”

19 Musical Moments To Die For

February 13, 2009 by Jim Connelly

This month, in honor of St. ~~Hallmark’s~~ Valentine’s day, it’s a special theme version of Musical Moments To Die For.

Love songs! Nothing but love songs!

Well, that’s not exactly right: not so much love songs, but songs about love, which is a totally different head. Totally.

However, just because I’ve applied a theme to this month’s post, it isn’t meant to be a definitive list of greatest songs about love or anything like that. It just happens that all of the songs this month are about it, that’s all. Which means, not uncoincidentally, a lot of these songs were huge hit singles or are incredibly familiar or obvious. Which, of course, doesn’t make them any less to die for.

This is the seventh in a series: The first one had 25, the second one had 24, the third one had 23, the fourth one had 22, the fifth one had 21, and the sixth had 20.