Merritt is the group’s primary songwriter, producer, and vocalist, as well as frequent multi-instrumentalist. Merritt’s lyrics are often about love and feature atypical or neutral gender roles, and are by turns ironic, tongue-in-cheek, bitter, and humorous.

Brevity has often been the soul of Magnetic Fields composer Stephin Merritt’s wit and the band’s most recent album, 2020’s Quickies is twenty-eight short songs by Merritt, ranging in length from thirteen seconds to two minutes and thirty-five seconds. 

To date, Stephin Merritt has written and recorded twelve Magnetic Fields albums, including the beloved 69 Love Songs and the 2017 critically acclaimed Nonesuch box set, 50 Song Memoir, which chronicled the first fifty years of the songwriter’s life with one song per year.