Stephin Merritt (born 1966 in New York City, United States) is a singer-son… Read Full Bio ↴Stephin Merritt (born 1966 in New York City, United States) is a singer-songwriter. He has created and played principal roles in the following bands: The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths, The Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes.

He briefly used the name The Baudelaire Memorial Orchestra as an attribution for a song written for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, entitled "Scream and Run Away". Further music was recorded for the audiobook versions of the series and is attributed to The Gothic Archies.

Under his own name, he recorded and released the soundtracks to the films Eban and Charley and Pieces of April. The soundtrack to the late Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete & Pete featured many of his songs.

He and director Chen Shi-Zheng have collaborated on three pieces of musical theatre; Orphan of Zhao (2003), Peach Blossom Fan (2004), and My Life as a Fairy Tale (2005). Select tracks from these works have been released on Nonesuch Records under the title Showtunes.

Merritt is openly gay. His lyrics are known for bending and blurring the gender line; examples include the song When My Boy Walks Down The Street, sung by a male vocalist, which contains the lyric "and he's going to be my wife". He is fascinated with the undead, often making veiled or explicit references to vampires. Other frequent motifs in his lyrics include trains and railroads, the moon, dancing, eyes, and, of course, love.

Merritt has a Chihuahua named Irving, after Irving Berlin. He was raised Buddhist by his counter-culture mother. He attended the progressive Massachusetts high school, The Cambridge School of Weston and briefly attended NYU before moving back to Boston. He is a smoker, and is known to light a cigarette while performing on stage. He has worked as a copy editor for Spin Magazine and Time Out New York.

One of Merritt's most notable quirks is that, when interrupting his speech for thought, he does not use linguistic placeholders such as "uh" or "er" to indicate that he is not done speaking, but instead simply stops speaking. This leads many interviewers unfamiliar with this behavior to cut him off before he has finished answering a question.

In a September 2005 interview conducted by The Onion's AV Club, alternative rock musician Bob Mould was reminded of an interviewer who once referred to Mould as "the most depressed man in rock." Mould's response was, "He's never met Stephin Merritt, obviously."

Epitaph for My Heart
Stephin Merritt Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

"Caution: to prevent electric shock do not remove cover
No user-serviceable parts inside Refer servicing to qualified
Service personnel"

Let this be the epitaph for my heart
Cupid put too much poison in the dart
This is the epitaph for my heart because it's gone, gone gone
And life goes on and on and on and death goes on, world without end

And you're not my friend
Who will mourn the passing of my heart
Will its little droppings climb the pop chart
Who'll take its ashes and,

Singing, fling them from the top of the Brill Building
And life goes on,
And dawn, and dawn and death goes on,

World without end and you're
Not my friend

Overall Meaning

The opening lines of this song are a warning sign, like one that would be found on a piece of electrical equipment, they signal the danger ahead. The warning tells us not to remove the cover or attempt to repair the parts ourselves. Instead, we should seek help from a qualified professional. This is a metaphor for the singer's heart, which is so broken that repair by anyone but an expert seems impossible. The heartbroken speaker is warning others not to tamper with his or her heart, just as we shouldn't with electrical equipment. Removing the cover risks further damage, and this is a danger the singer does not want to face.

The rest of the song talks about the aftermath of a heartbreak, how the singer's heart has been fatally wounded by an arrow from Cupid's bow. The first line of the chorus is "Let this be the epitaph for my heart," which is a statement of finality; the singer has lost hope that their heart can ever be repaired. They ask who will mourn the passing of their heart, and wonder if their pain will be heard in the form of a hit song. The image of their heart's ashes being scattered from the top of the Brill Building, the iconic home of many famous record labels in New York City, shows a certain amount of hopefulness – not in a positive outcome, but in the ability of their great pain to be seen and understood by others. However, the final line is a sad declaration that the singer's former lover is no longer their friend.

Overall, the song is a lament for a lost love, and the impossibility of healing the pain it caused. The analogy to electrical equipment adds another layer of meaning to the song, as it suggests that our hearts are just as vulnerable as any other machine, and that sometimes, they cannot be put back together.

Line by Line Meaning

Let this be the epitaph for my heart
This song speaks of the death of my heart and this particular line is the beginning of the song, where I ask for it to be my epitaph

Cupid put too much poison in the dart
Cupid, who is supposed to make people fall in love, made me fall in love excessively which led to the death of my heart

This is the epitaph for my heart because it's gone, gone gone
My heart has perished, completely and utterly which is why this song is the epitaph for it

And life goes on and on and on and death goes on, world without end
Despite the death of my heart, life moves on and death is eternal

And you're not my friend
You are not my friend as you have not mourned the passing of my heart

Who will mourn the passing of my heart
I wonder who will grieve the loss of my heart

Will its little droppings climb the pop chart
I wonder if any songs (pop chart) will be made about the death of my heart

Who'll take its ashes and, singing, fling them from the top of the Brill Building
I wonder who would take the remains of my heart and scatter them on top of the Brill Building while singing

And life goes on, And dawn, and dawn and death goes on, World without end and you're not my friend
Once again, I emphasise that life and death are continuous and eternal, and you still are not my friend

Lyrics © ROUGH TRADE PUBLISHING, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Written by: Stephin Merritt

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind

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