1999. I was eight years old and just beginning to open my ears to the Beatles, my first, and forevermore my favorite band. How fitting that eleven years later, thousands of bands and albums and songs later, I return to what I started with: the love song.

I have a theory. Most artists write based on what they know best, whether it be drugs or politics or stories from their own lives. But what most people know the best is love. Love and variations on it, lack of it, loss of it, falling into it, falling out of it, loneliness, ambiguity, believing in it, not believing in it.

The Magnetic Fields have the tongue-in-cheek love song mastered. (“A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off”, “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side”) (Even the album title is tongue-in-cheek.)

They have the sincere love song mastered.  (“Come Back From San Francisco”)

They have the breakup song mastered. (“Epitaph For My Heart”, “I Don’t Want to Get Over You” [<- just posted])

They can playfully dabble in other genres and still come up with lovely love songs. (“Punk Love”, “World Love”, “Love is Like Jazz”)

This is an album that makes you feel better about life whether or not you were feeling bad to begin with. Even the sad songs have a renewing quality about them, like you know the singer knows how you feel, but you both know that better days are going to come.

Do yourself a favor and set aside three hours on your next free day to listen to all 69 love songs on this record. This is a bona-fide classic.