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."
The Collar And The Garter
Stephin Merritt Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
But words do not enthrall her
They dance around the washing pan
The collar and the garter
He tartly starts up repartee
But her retorts are smarter
She will not name a wedding day
So to and fro and so they dance
The collar and the garter
He swears if he should lose his love
Then love will gain a martyr
They part and that's the story of
The garter and the collar
He keeps his braggadocio
Through years of fall and squalor
And toasts the maid who loved him so
The collar and the garter
The opening lines of Stephin Merritt's The Collar And The Garter describe a man trying, but failing, to charm his lover through words alone. The two of them dance, presumably in the midst of household chores, with the washing pan serving as a makeshift dance floor. The metaphor of the "collar and the garter" likely alludes to the man's attempts to woo his lover through both formal and informal means--the collar representative of a more traditional, formal approach, while the garter represents a more intimate and suggestive means of seduction. Despite the man's banter and flirtatious attempts, his lover remains unswayed, answering his comments with sharper retorts of her own.
The song's chorus describes the push-and-pull dance between the two partners, as they shift between moments of apparent closeness and those of distance. The man threatens to pledge his life to love, should he lose his lover, but ultimately the two separate, and the story ends with the man admiring his own bravado, toasting the maid who never agreed to be his bride.
Overall, The Collar And The Garter depicts a dynamic between two lovers that is neither entirely hopeful nor entirely negative, the imagery of the dance and the metaphors of the collar and the garter serving to illustrate the tension between attraction and resistance.
Line by Line Meaning
He speaks as sweetly as he can
He tries to be as charming as possible
But words do not enthrall her
But his words aren't enough to win her over
They dance around the washing pan
Their argument goes back and forth
The collar and the garter
They can't seem to communicate effectively
He tartly starts up repartee
He begins the conversation with a sarcastic tone
But her retorts are smarter
But she always has a clever response
She will not name a wedding day
She doesn't want to commit to marriage
The garter and the collar
Their argument revolves around their inability to connect
So to and fro and so they dance
Their argument goes back and forth
The collar and the garter
Their communication issues persist
He swears if he should lose his love
He promises to be a martyr for his love
Then love will gain a martyr
His love will be remembered for eternity
They part and that's the story of
They leave each other and that's the end of the story
The garter and the collar
Their miscommunication led to their separation
He keeps his braggadocio
He continues to boast and brag
Through years of fall and squalor
Through tough times and hardships
And toasts the maid who loved him so
And celebrates the woman who once loved him
The collar and the garter
Their communication issues are still present
Contributed by Makayla O. Suggest a correction in the comments below.