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 Song of the Assassin
Stephin Merritt Lyrics
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When they're gone.
One can set aside an hour or two for them.
Oh, the red and purple men were rivals at court.
The red one thought of life as a violent sport
Where the losing guy deserves to die...
So he hired an assassin to do the deed
But an honest man can't be killed for greed.
But the killer had an order that he would not dare disobey
So he found an oak tree where he could bash his head
And now he's dead...
Stephin Merritt's "The Song of the Assassin" begins with the advice to remember people even after they're gone. The singer reflects on people who have passed and encourages his son to make time to remember them. The song then tells the tale of two men, the red and purple, who were rivals at court. The red man believed that life was a violent sport and that losing meant death, so he hired an assassin to kill his rival. However, the assassin was an honest man and could not be bought for greed, so he disobeyed the order. Instead, he found a tree to bash his own head in order to avoid the dishonour of not following orders.
The song reflects on themes of honour, loyalty, and violence. It shows the contradiction between a violent worldview and the consequences of that worldview. The red man's worldview was one of violence and death, but he couldn't carry out the death himself, so he hired someone who also couldn't carry out the death. Meanwhile, the assassin's honour forced him to kill himself, rather than obey the immoral order of the red man.
Line by Line Meaning
My son, it's important to remember people
When they're gone.
Remember to cherish your loved ones before they pass away
One can set aside an hour or two for them.
Take time to honor and remember those who have passed on
Oh, the red and purple men were rivals at court.
There were opposing factions in court, represented by the red and purple men
The red one thought of life as a violent sport
Where the losing guy deserves to die...
The red man believed that life was like a competition and that those who lost deserved to die
So he hired an assassin to do the deed
But an honest man can't be killed for greed.
He hired someone to kill his opponent, but it's wrong to kill someone who's not done anything harmful
(Heaven does not like preemptive strike...)
Taking action before someone has done something wrong is not favored by Heaven
But the killer had an order that he would not dare disobey
The assassin was obligated to carry out the hit, and couldn't refuse
So he found an oak tree where he could bash his head
And now he's dead...
Rather than kill an innocent person, the assassin chose to take his own life
Contributed by Bentley S. Suggest a correction in the comments below.