Mann, Aimee

views updated

AIMEE MANN

Born: Richmond, Virginia, 8 September 1960

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Bachelor No. 2 (2000)

Hit songs since 1990: "That's Just What You Are," "Choice in the Matter," "Save Me"

Aimee Mann is a singer/songwriter who is equally adept at creating both unflinchingly honest songs and engaging, guitar-based pop melodies. As a solo artist and as the lead singer of the 1980s band 'Til Tuesday, she collaborated with some of the leading songwriters of her generation, including Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford of the British pop band Squeeze, Jules Shear, and Elvis Costello. Lyrically, Mann is known for her wry, clear-eyed observations on regret, recrimination, and the frailties of human relationships. Mann has become the poster child for the lone songwriter who has prevailed against a greedy music industry driven by hit singles.

Mann first appeared in the Boston punk band the Young Snakes, which she formed after quitting the prestigious Berklee School of Music in the early 1980s. In 1982 she left the Young Snakes and formed the synthesizer-pop band 'Til Tuesday with fellow dropout and then-boyfriend Michael Hausman. Joey Pesce and Robert Holmes joined them later, with Mann as the lead singer and primary songwriter. Their first hit song, "Voices Carry," about a woman with a not-too-nice boyfriend, propelled their debut album of the same name to gold status in seven months. The music video for the song was on constant rotation on MTV during the network's infancy, which probably helped record sales.

Epic Records signed 'Til Tuesday after they won a Boston battle-of-the-bands contest; it would be the first but not the last time Mann would find herself beholden to record companies. After 'Til Tuesday's initial success and commercially disappointing second and third albums, Welcome Home (1986) and Everything's Different Now (1989), the band broke up. Aimee Mann went solo, Hausman became her manager, and in 1993 she released her debut solo Whatever, on a new independent label, Imago Records.

Although Whatever 's batch of thoughtful rock tunes, which rely more on guitars and less on synthesizers, drew high critical acclaim, Imago went bankrupt and folded shortly thereafter. Imago still owned Mann's second album, I'm with Stupid, which they sold to label boss David Geffen for release in 1996 on DGC, his alternative-music imprint. Mann co-wrote much of I'm with Stupid with long-time producer Jon Brion. It was critically regarded as a masterpiece of instantly compelling, three-minute pop songs. Though the tone of I'm with Stupid was often bitter, Mann demonstrated she could convey far more with a few rhyming lines than most lyricists accomplish in a whole song. "I could talk to you till I'm blue in the face / But we still would arrive at the very same place / With you running around and me out of the race," sings Mann on "That's Just What You Are," a tune she wrote with Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford. The song turned into a modest hit, appearing on the soundtrack for the popular television show Melrose Place.

By the summer of 1998 Mann was ready to release her third album but was thrown another curve when DGC was acquired by Interscope in the Polygram-Universal merger at the end of 1998, which left some 200 artists without a record label. At first matters looked promising, but by the spring of 1999 it became clear that Interscope was looking for a hit, not "a record for her fans," as label co-chair Jimmy Iovine told the New York Times. At this point, Mann had already recorded most of the third album, Bachelor No. 2, but she needed the help of lawyers to buy back her masters from Interscope. Never one to bow to the pressures of conformity, Mann then created her own label, SuperEgo Records, and released Bachelor No. 2 in 2000. Her label is part of the organization United Musicians, which she and musician Michael Penn (whom she married in 1998) established to help like-minded artists release albums independently.

Unsurprisingly, the songs on Bachelor No. 2 contain double entendres that may be interpreted as excoriations of the music business, or of former lovers, or both. Filmmaker and fan Paul Thomas Anderson approached Mann with the proposal to script a film inspired by some of the songs on Bachelor No. 2. They had become friends when Michael Penn composed the original score for Anderson's films Hard Eight (1996) and Boogie Nights (1997). Mann agreed, and the film Magnolia (1999) was born from the opening line of "Deathly," a typical, emotionally self-destructive Aimee Mann lyric: "Now that I've met you / Would you object to / Never seeing each other again?" The film earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Save Me." The nomination and the success of the soundtrack, which sold half a million copies, brought her music to a wider audience.

Mann and Penn spent much of 2001 and 2002 touring the United States with their act Acoustic Vaudeville, which grew out of weekly appearances at the Los Angeles club Café Largo. With comedians filling in the witty patter between songs, the tour was a sell-out success. In 2002 Mann released Lost in Space, a collection of midtempo pop songs tinged with whirring chamberlins and a continued preoccupation with relationships, fame, and life's disappointments. It debuted at number thirty-five on the Billboard 200 chart the week of its release.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Whatever (Imago, 1993); I'm with Stupid (Geffen, 1996); Bachelor No. 2, or the Return of the Dodo (SuperEgo, 2000); Lost in Space (SuperEgo, 2002). With 'Til Tuesday: Voices Carry (Epic, 1985); Welcome Home (Epic, 1986); Everything's Different Now (Epic, 1988). With the Young Snakes: Bark Along with the Young Snakes (Ambiguous, 1982). Soundtrack: Music from the Motion Picture Magnolia (Reprise, 1999).