Music Week Interview: Stephin Merritt, The Gothic Archies

Stephin Merritt [website] has put out a lot of exceptionally interesting music for adults in his career, and he turned some of his much-divided attention to children's music when Lemony Snicket invited him to compose songs to accompany the audio-book versions of his Series of Unfortunate Events. You can read our review of the deftly dark album here; it was such an unusual collection to link to young listeners, however indirectly, that we thought we should get Merritt's take on composing for children.

ZRecs: How does composing for kids compare with composing for adults? What did you do differently?

Stephin Merritt: Originally the songs appeared on the Lemony Snicket audio books. As far as I can tell these books are read by a general audience that happens to include many children, but also many adults. So, my only conscious change of approach for child listeners was not to use obscenities (I sometimes do; I like them).

ZRecs: What effect did that have on the songs? Structures, melodies, lyrics?

Merritt: One of the songs, "Freakshow," was just a little too traumatizingly bleak for a child listener when I first wrote it, so I didn't use it on the appropriate audio book. For the album, I gave it a ludicrous happy ending, which actually makes it even bleaker if you're paying attention, but that's okay because it's late in the album, so by that point any listener who doesn't understand what I'm doing has turned it off.

ZRecs: What do you sing about when you're writing for kids?

Merritt: I keep it primal: death, deformity, danger, deception, and doo-doo. Children, rightly, find these things funny.

ZRecs: If an author has an "ideal reader," do you think a songwriter has an "ideal listener"? Who is your "ideal" kid listener?

Merritt: Ordinarily my ideal listener has heard every record I have heard. Since that is impossible in a child listener, I'll settle for someone who has an eclectic sense of situational humor.

ZRecs: Do you think there are basic conflicts between writing music kids will appreciate and music adults will appreciate? What do kids love in music that adults can't stand? Vice versa?

Merritt: I love the patronizingly silly children's music of the early rock era, but I don't think its naive quality can be recaptured; fashion has rolled over it like a tank. It has always been important to me that my songs and recordings sound just as good ten years later, and part of that is that I mustn't seem to be talking down to the listener; teenagers in particular are very sensitive to that.

Children seem much less bothered by repetition than adults are, and seem to like anyone smiling with large, healthy teeth. Many adults don't want to be smiled at all the time, because we have learned to mistrust anyone who smiles too much. (But then, I'm from New York. Life is different in Wisconsin.) Adults display more interest in vague, lovey-dovey lyrics about relationships; children want to know more about squid.

ZRecs: Throughout your career you've done a lot of work to dismantle conventions of convenience in American songwriting while maintaining and celebrating ones you feel to be essential. What conventions do you think exist for kids' music? Which ones speak to something important in music, and which ones should be discarded to reinvigorate music for kids?

Merritt: There should be children's music that is less about crowd control, and more about how an individual gets through life. I guess it would be appreciated most by only children (like me), who don't have a pile of siblings constantly competing loudly for attention. One of my early memories is of feeling that Pete Seeger, singing "Little White Duck," was insulting my intelligence.

ZRecs: Who are you listening to these days? Anyone who writes music for kids?

Merritt: I listen to a lot of bubblegum and psychedelic rock, from 1967 or so, which is often laced with winking and double entendres ("Yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy"), so that it works on two different age levels. I like to think my songs can be heard the same way by all ages, with that extra treat for the adults, as in the original Bugs Bunny shorts.

ZRecs: Was there ever any chance of you writing the music for the Series of Unfortunate Events movie? What did you think of Thomas Newman's work for it?

Merritt: I asked, but you can't compete with the Newman family. (Maybe I should change my name.) His delightful, ersatz nineteenth-century inventor's music for the end credits sounded like what I would have done for the whole film.

ZRecs: Along the same train of thought, how did writing this material compare with what you did with Showtunes?

Merritt: Well, both in the audiobooks and in the stage plays I was writing for characters and situations created by someone else. But in the theater songs I had to cleave closely to the plots, whereas in The Tragic Treasury that wouldn't be a good idea, because the songs come at the end of the recording, when you've already heard the plot so why repeat it; or, if someone hears the song outside that context, I don't want the song to give away the plot.

ZRecs: What's next for you? Will you be doing more kids' stuff?

Merritt: Maybe I will try writing songs for the elderly.

You can read our review of The Tragic Treasury here, or buy the album on Amazon.com or iTunes.