Inspired by the Magnetic Fields at EIF, Fringe performers tell us their favourite unconventional love song

Stephin Merritt aka The Magnetic Fields, set to play classic triple-album 69 Love Songs at the EIF | Contributed

It’s 25 years since American band The Magnetic Fields released 69 Love Songs, their three volume concept album about love. The album is now widely regarded as a modern classic.

This weekend, songwriter Stephin Merritt and his band will perform this acclaimed collection of eclectic, often unconventional love songs in its entirety, over two nights, at the Edinburgh International Festival – the first time the Magnetic Fields have done this in two decades.

To mark the occasion, we asked some of this year’s festival performers to tell us their own favourite unconventional love songs, and explain why they love them…

Hannah Platt chooses My Way of Life by the Enoch Light Singers

My Way of Life is a cover of a classic Frank Sinatra song but the arrangement by the Enoch Light Singers gives it a more sinister, chilling tone. It’s both haunting and beautiful. Comparing it to how Every Breath You Take by The Police could be interpreted as a love song but the real inspiration is more menacing, I see this version of My Way of Life, initially a love song, instead relating to being in an abusive relationship – how your own personality contorts and moulds to whatever the abusive partner wants. When I listen to it, I’m reminded of my own experiences and how inescapable being in that position felt.

Hannah Platt: Defence Mechanism, Pleasance Courtyard, 8.10pm, until 25 August

Mustafa Algiyadi chooses Jadaka al-Ghaithu by Fairuz

Jadaka al-Ghaithu is a Muwashah [Arab music genre and poetry form from Al Andalus] written by Lisan al-Din Ibn al-Khatib in the 14th century. The lyrics are tantalising and depict the complete infatuation of the singer/writer (we don't know the gender here) with their lover (he, in this case) that at some point even comets were getting jealous of their love and at the end it is not clear if it was a dream or reality. The song is sung by Fairuz.

In the 10th grade in Tripoli we used to sing it with a group of schoolkids constantly; one starts drumming on a wooden desk pretending it was a Darbuka (usually me) and someone else starts singing (not me, as I have a horrible voice).

Listening to the song brings a feeling of nostalgia and beautiful school memories. There is still no lover associated with the song, luckily. And like the song itself, it is associated with the perfect incarnation of romantic love.

Mustafa Algiyadi: Almost Legal Alien, Just the Tonic Nucleus, 4.30pm, until 25 August

Anesti Daniels chooses A Real Hero by College and Electric Youth

This song is in the movie Drive and it's a masterpiece. The booming bassline – and the light and airy synths that are held together by carefree spacious vocals – just have that feeling of young summer love. It sounds like the feeling of meeting someone you connect with and they surprise you. And that first month with them is just late nights in a city of neon lights.

Anesti Daniels: Artificially Intelligent, Underbelly Bristo Square, 2.15pm, until 25 August

Sarah Roberts chooses Girl, So Confusing remix by Charlie XCX featuring Lorde

Charli XCX and Lorde’s Girl, So Confusing remix has altered my brain chemistry. It’s a love letter to each other and also to their own insecurities. It’s acceptance, it’s love… it’s so, so romantic to me. Lorde’s verse is the most vulnerable and real thing I’ve heard in pop. Hiding from a girl you don’t understand and coming to the realisation that you’re both going through the swells of life as a woman and forgiving each other for pushing one another away when it wasn’t even about them really and you’re actually better off as a team, is so important to me.

I will be saying “let’s work it out in the remix” from now until forever. It’s a new firm favourite love song because it encompasses all the messiness of girlhood and rivalry and arrives somewhere healing and celebratory and together. I love that. 

Sarah Roberts: Silkworm, Assembly George Square, 10.35pm, until 25 August

Chris Tavener chooses Marie by Randy Newman

The Southern drawl of the bespectacled, comedic songwriter Randy Newman would seem like an unusual choice for romantic balladeer of the year. However, for me, those unusual qualities amplify the bittersweetness of one of the most beautiful and irregular love songs ever written. 

Marie is written from the perspective of a drunken lover talking to his partner lying asleep. He quietly confesses to her that “he's weak and he's lazy” and he “hurt her so”. When she's in trouble, he turns away. He's altogether a very unsavoury character; but he also admits that he loves her in the only way his stunted vocabulary and poor emotional-intelligence will allow him: “But I love you and I loved you the first time I saw you / And I always will love you Marie.”

Those simple words speak volumes about a troubled heart; a man who is probably admitting for the first time that he cares incredibly deeply about someone, yet he can't even tell her while she's awake. As a songwriter myself (and a comedic one), I've learned from this and so many other Newman songs that less is more. A few simple words can tell a whole, heart-wrenching love story.

www.christavener.co.uk

James Rowland chooses The Twist by Frightened Rabbit

OK, before you read this I really advise you to listen to this song immediately… otherwise the following may seem like the fever dream of a romantic poet. Billy Kennedy’s keys cut through silence like a jackhammer wrapped in velvet: a perfect, simple, jarring rhythm for Scott Hutchison’s earthed and plaintive voice to wrap itself around. We're already there. The press of bodies. Finding a stranger. Christ, it's sexy. It's a sexy song! Blushes hidden beneath booze and busy bodies, the eye contact… “Is that pink mist or just lit dry ice?”

James Rowland Dies at the End of the Show | Contributed

I can't explain it but that line is All Things. Grant Hutchison’s percussion fills out our world, opening with almost medieval tambourine; a history of flirtation. Adding the bass drum, heartbeat loud in our ears. The story is: a man meets a woman and they have a one night stand… but that's like saying the human brain is a lump of meat. Scott, with a diamond-edged scalpel forensically dissects the emotional, physical need for someone. Insecurity, shape-shifting confidence, callousness, vulnerability and recognition of your wants unfulfilled in another. I bloody love this song, which is why it's in my show this year. Come and see it.

James Rowland Dies at the End of the Show, Summerhall, 6pm, until 26 August

Michael Kunze chooses I Went to the Store One Day by Father John Misty

This is a beautiful and deeply funny love song about a man overcoming his long held skepticism of marriage and the concept of “true love”, setting all that aside and marvelling at the beautiful simplicity of the deep love he’s found with his partner. He goes from "someone oughta put me in a home" to popping the question.

He doesn’t lose his edge, as he meta-jokes about corny love songs “Insert here, a sentiment re: our golden years”, yet asks can we “put an end to our endless regressive tendency to scorn? / Provincial concepts like your dowry and your daddy's farm”. It’s not so much about answering his doubts about marriage and love as it is letting go of the questions themselves.

As a now happily married former child of divorce, with marriage hangups of my own, he eloquently captures the act of letting go of youthful (and pretentious) notions about the lunacy of love, the deep basic-ness of marriage, throwing all that reason out the window and embracing the irrationality of it all. Love, after all, isn’t an intellectual position, it’s a feeling.

Michael Kunze: Infinity Mirror, Underbelly Cowgate, 12.55pm, until 25 August

Alexander Bennett chooses Evil by Interpol

Is Evil a love song? Interpol lyricist Paul Banks has rejected the idea that his lyrics have any straightforward meaning, stating that he's trying to channel the spirit of surrealism and absurdism with his words, perhaps allowing the listener to create meaning within lyrics that don't have a fixed meaning. The words of Evil aren't there by accident though, and largely evoke pain and sorrow. There are lots of questions within the song, always coming from a place of doubt, likewise plenty of references to the passage of time and travel. Everything’s thrust along with a sense of inevitability by an iconic baseline and haunting piano, unplaceable in their intended emotional tone.

Evil has a vivid sense of time and momentum, like it’s being marched toward its inexplicably joyous conclusion. The chorus, building in every iteration, becomes an explosion, a powerfully mournful howl of longing. I think Evil is about love enduring through hardship, true love. Perhaps the “evil” the title refers to is that the purest thing in life is so painful. I was 13 when I first heard Evil, and my relationship with it changes and grows over time like no other song. My enduring love, as it were.

Alexander Bennett: Emotional Daredevil, Gilded Balloon Patter House, 6.20pm, until 26 August

Chris Grace chooses I Don’t Believe in the Sun by the Magnetic Fields

Just after I went to university, I lived in New York in 1999 when I first heard I Don't Believe in the Sun. Listening to The Magnetic Fields was transformative; I would wander the streets of the East Village with my Rio MP3 player, pondering why love would "never shine on me". It was the perfect song to shepherd me into dusty cafés full of old chairs and sofas, where I'd flop into a corner with a notebook and attempt to write poems, jokes, or lyrics to equally melancholic songs. Stephen Merritt's words and music made me feel more interesting and worldly than I truly was; it was definitely a pose, but that pose helped me navigate the transition from adolescence to adulthood while figuring out which specific kinds of sadness suited me.

Chris Grace: Sardines (A Comedy About Death), Assembly George Square, 10.55am and 1.40pm, until 26 August

The Magnetic Fields perform 69 Love Songs across two concerts at the Queen’s Hall, on 24 and 25 August, both at 8.30pm, www.eif.co.uk

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