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."

The Red Shoes
Stephin Merritt Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

A bad young girl
With hair white as milk
Got witches' shoes
Which shone bright red
And had been finely woven
From the oldest silk
With drops of blood to dye each thread

She put them on
When she began to dance
She heard the witches play their strings
Which have been finely tuned
To dying elephants
And to the shrieks of toppled kings

She pirouetted and she grand-jetéed
Et cetera, till she was out of breath

And when the last note had finally played
The bad young girl had danced herself to death

Overall Meaning

"The Red Shoes" by Stephin Merritt is a hauntingly beautiful song that tells the story of a bad young girl who acquires a pair of witches' shoes that shine bright red and are made of the oldest silk with drops of blood to dye each thread. When she puts on the shoes, she begins to dance to the witches' finely-tuned strings, which are tuned to dying elephants and the shrieks of toppled kings. She dances until she is out of breath, and when the last note finally plays, the bad young girl has danced herself to death.

The lyrics of the song can be interpreted in a number of ways. It can be seen as a cautionary tale about the dangers of vanity and the pursuit of pleasure at any cost. The red shoes can be seen as a symbol of temptation and the girl's obsession with them as a symbol of her own self-destructive tendencies. The witches' finely-tuned strings can be seen as a symbol of the seductive power of music and how it can lead us astray if we are not careful.

Overall, "The Red Shoes" is a haunting and thought-provoking song that speaks to the dangers of excess and the allure of temptation. It is a cautionary tale that reminds us to be careful with what we desire and to be mindful of the consequences of our actions.

Line by Line Meaning

A bad young girl
There was a young girl who was considered bad by society

With hair white as milk
The girl had white hair

Got witches' shoes
She had acquired shoes from witches

Which shone bright red
The shoes had a bright red color

And had been finely woven
The shoes were made with great care

From the oldest silk
The material used for the shoes was ancient silk

With drops of blood to dye each thread
The shoes were dyed with drops of blood

She put them on
The girl wore the shoes

When she began to dance
Once she started dancing

She heard the witches play their strings
She heard the witches playing music

Which have been finely tuned
The music was perfectly tuned