You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
This episode contains explicit language.
I'm Stephen Merritt, and I am the main member of the Magnetic Fields.
I don't actually remember writing this song, because I write songs in bars.
Generally, these are gay bars patronized by...
men of a certain advanced age who prefer to listen to disco music in the background
while they drink cocktails.
So it was in one such bar that I was hanging out,
and I don't remember what happened next, but when I woke up the next morning,
I was at home, looked in my songwriting notebook,
and in fact I had written a song, and it was Andrew in Drag.
Stephen Merritt has fronted the band The Magnetic Fields for over 25 years.
In this episode,
he'll break down the song Andrew in Drag from the 2012 album Love at the Bottom of the Sea,
even though he doesn't actually remember writing it.
After releasing his triple album 69 Love Songs in 1999 to huge acclaim,
Stephen stopped using synthesizers for the next three Magnetic Fields albums.
Coming up, he talks about why he stopped and why he started using them again,