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 View from Above
Stephin Merritt Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Hooray! Where the happy deer and the antelope just play all day!
Surgin' through the virgin snow with you (and you, and you)
I'm in heaven climbin' up the view!
Why would one look up at the sun?
I just love the view from above!
What man has seen such a lovely view?
Oh, joy! A world of ants, and as easy to destroy!
We can see it's all a stupid joke
Like the sun looking down with love.
We have won the view from above!
The View from Above is a whimsical and satirical ode to the superiority complex that humans often exhibit when they are given a bird's eye view of the world. The song's protagonist is on a mountain slope with deer and antelopes and enjoying the serene, virgin snow. He is accompanied by multiple people, but the song gives no indication of their identities, except that they share the joy of climbing up the view. The singer exclaims that he is in heaven, and he loves looking at the world from above rather than gazing up at the sun. The line, "what man has seen such a lovely view?" highlights the sense of achievement that comes with being able to see the world from a high vantage point - a view that has never been seen before by humankind.
The mood of the song, however, turns as the singer gazes down on hazy townfolk. He realizes that their daily activities and concerns are meaningless in the grand scheme of things, which can also be interpreted as a metaphor for how human struggles are insignificant when seen from a larger perspective. The line "we can see it's all a stupid joke" highlights the absurdity of the human existence, and how by isolating themselves from it, the singer and his companions feel superior in some way. The song ends with the triumphant line, "we have won the view from above," implying that by being above it all, they have achieved some sort of victory.
Line by Line Meaning
This scene is set on a mountain slope.
The setting is on a slope of a mountain.
Hooray! Where the happy deer and the antelope just play all day!
It's a joyful place where deer and antelope play all day.
Surgin' through the virgin snow with you (and you, and you)
They are joyfully skiing through fresh snow with others.
I'm in heaven climbin' up the view!
The experience is so heavenly while climbing up the slope and taking in the view.
Why would one look up at the sun?
They question the purpose of looking up at the sun.
I just love the view from above!
They express their love for the view from an elevated position.
What man has seen such a lovely view?
They marvel at the rarity of such a beautiful sight.
Oh, joy! A world of ants, and as easy to destroy!
They take pleasure in seeing people as insignificant as ants, and how easily they can be destroyed.
Gazing down on hazy townfolk...
They are observing the people below in a town covered in a haze.
We can see it's all a stupid joke
They find the activities of people below to be a foolish and meaningless joke.
Like the sun looking down with love.
The reference to the sun looking down with love is a comparison to their view from above.
We have won the view from above!
They feel triumphant in having the view from above as if it's a prize to be won.
Contributed by Xavier I. Suggest a correction in the comments below.