2. “When My Boy Walks Down the Street”
“Grand pianos crash together when my boy walks down the street,” Merritt sings on this coolly catchy, lyrically vivid fuzz-pop number, which imagines the object of his affection as the star of a surreal cinematic montage: “There are whole new kinds of weather when he walks to his new beat.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. “No One Will Ever Love You”
The pure-toned vocalist Shirley Simms sings many of the sweetest of the “69 Love Songs,” but on this memorable, heart-string-tugging track she cuts her sugar with a heavy dose of arsenic, telling an indifferent lover, “No one will ever love you, honestly/No one will ever love you for your honesty.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. “Grand Canyon”
Personally, this one is in my Top 3. A deceptively simple song elevated into the sublime by an unexpected, almost hymnlike ascending chord, “Grand Canyon” contrasts mythic metaphor with the ordinary reality of romance as Merritt sings, devastatingly, “I’m just me, I’m only me/And you used to love me that way.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. “Busby Berkeley Dreams”
Let’s keep the devastation going with this wrenching piano ballad that stages a lost love as an “outrageously beautiful” Old Hollywood musical number worthy of the director and choreographer himself. “Gold Diggers of ’69,” anyone?
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. “Acoustic Guitar”
On the only song I can think of that name-checks Charo, Gwar and Steve Earle, the vocalist Claudia Gonson strikes the perfect balance between tongue-in-cheek meta-wit and sincere emotion, making this sparse, plaintive tune one of Disc 3’s most arresting and quotable moments.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. “(Crazy for You but) Not That Crazy”
A wry synth-pop number that Merritt sings in a droning deadpan, this song tests the outer limits of lovesickness: “I built a ship with my own hands, to take us to the moon/I took a pen in my own hand and wrote you a hundred tunes.” Bonus points for the little Flamin’ Groovies-esque jangle that decorates the final chorus.
