Some of you may have noticed that I've finally picked up a copy of 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields, which shows you that my musical tastes are, as always, on the cutting edge. (This album came out about five years ago.) Anyway, better late than never, I guess. This album is great. Listening to all sixty-nine songs at one session is pleasant but ultimately overwhelming, like eating sixty-four slices of American cheese. The way to do it, I've found, is to let the album work as background music until one song or another—"Sweet-Lovin' Man," say, or "Long-Forgotten Fairy Tale"—draws your attention. You replay these songs a couple of times, they become landmarks, and eventually you've drawn sort of a map of the territory, although it could take weeks to explore it all.

More interestingly, I've realized that 69 Love Songs could potentially serve the same role for a mix-tape enthusiast as a stock-footage library does for a film editor: a virtually limitless source of quick fixes and inspired transitions. Every damn subject and style—within the confines of the love genre, of course—is represented here, usually in dependably catchy and ironic three-minute form. As a result, these songs are tailor-made for fixing a dull spot in a mix, and because their level of quality is so uniformly high, you can usually find a promising song to fit your topic or mood just by scanning the list of titles. "No One Will Ever Love You," for example, would be an irresistible title for any mix, even if it weren't a great song, which it is. (Stephin Merritt writes the second-funniest song titles I've ever seen. The funniest, of course, are by Morrissey.)