The Charm of the Highway Strip is the fourth studio album by The Magnetic Fields, released in 1994. It is the first Magnetic Fields album to have its original release with Merge Records. Its title, lyrics and musical styling are a nod to country music, though the songs of Stephin Merritt remain rooted in classic pop and synthesizers. Virtually every song deals with roads and travel - and several songs' lyrics implicitly reference vampires.
The title of the album comes from a quote by J. B. Jackson, 1959: "Let us hope that the merits and charm of the highway strip are not so obscure but that they will be accepted by a wider public."
This is the group's first full album in which songwriter Merritt also takes lead vocals.
The album was released on vinyl for the first time on May 6, 2008, via Merge Records, the first appearance of any Magnetic Fields album on vinyl.
Arcade Fire covered "Born on a Train" during a live performance on the KCRW program Morning Becomes Eclectic.
Lush covered "I Have the Moon" as a single B-side, and in the Japanese/Canadian released album Topolino.
The song "Dust Bowl" was used during an episode of the television series version of This American Life ("Pandora's Box").
The album is ranked number one on the music critic and historian Piero Scaruffi's list of the best pop albums of all time.
Read more about The Charm Of The Highway Strip: Track Listing, Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words charm, highway and/or strip:
“Each lonely scene shall thee restore;
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Beloved till life can charm no more,
And mourn’d till Pity’s self be dead.”
—William Collins (1721–1759)
“The highway presents an interesting study of American roadside advertising. There are signs that turn like windmills; startling signs that resemble crashed airplanes; signs with glass lettering which blaze forth at night when automobile headlight beams strike them; flashing neon signs; signs painted with professional touch; signs crudely lettered and misspelled.... They extol the virtues of ice creams, shoe creams, cold creams;...”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)