Aimee Elizabeth Mann (born September 8, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter. Over the course of four decades, she has released more than a dozen albums as a solo artist and with other musicians. She is noted for her sardonic and literate lyrics about dark subjects. Mann's work with the producer Jon Brion in the 1990s was influential on American alternative rock.
Mann released her first solo album, Whatever, in 1993, followed by I'm With Stupid in 1995. Both earned positive reviews but low sales, and placed Mann in conflict with her record company, Geffen. She achieved wider recognition for her contributions to the soundtrack for the Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia (1999). Her song "Save Me" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal. After Geffen refused to release her third album, Bachelor No. 2, Mann released it under her own label, SuperEgo Records, in 2000. It achieved acclaim and strong sales, establishing Mann as a career artist who could work outside the major label system.
Mann was born at the Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, on September 8, 1960.[1][2][3] When she was three, her mother had an affair and became pregnant[4] and her parents divorced.[1] Mann was kidnapped by her mother and her new boyfriend and taken to Europe, where they traveled.[1] Mann's father, a marketing executive,[2] hired a private detective, who brought her back from England a year later to a new stepmother and two stepbrothers.[1][4] Mann said her father seemed "like a stranger" when they were reunited.[4] The kidnapping gave Mann post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety around travelling later in life.[4] She did not see her mother again until she was 14.[1] She forgave her decades later, saying she had been "trapped on every side".[4]
Mann grew up in Bon Air, Virginia, and attended Midlothian High School in Chesterfield County.[5] She was withdrawn and would not talk, and her father and stepmother sent her to a psychiatrist.[6] Her drama teacher recalled her as "kind of an insecure kid, very quiet, very introspective … When she did start talking, she was worth listening to."[2]
Mann learned to play her brother's guitar when she was confined to bed with glandular fever at the age of 12.[7][5] As a teenager, she enjoyed David Bowie and Iggy Pop and was inspired by punk and new wave music. She said: "[It] was so interesting, so inventive – literally do whatever you want. That Patti Smith was out there and people were accepting her? Oh my God, there's a way out."[4]
In 1978,[5] feeling she did not fit in the "normal world",[4] Mann enrolled in Berklee College of Music in Boston to study bass guitar.[8] She had wanted to learn the bass as a child, but her family ridiculed her, saying it was unladylike.[9] After 18 months, she dropped out and joined the Boston punk band the Young Snakes on bass.[9][8] She was unhappy in the band, saying the other members objected to her writing love songs or music they considered too melodic.[9] She joined the band Ministry,[4] which she said helped her learn to write songs efficiently.[9] In the early 1980s, she worked at Newbury Comics in Massachusetts.[10]
At Berklee, Mann and Michael Hausman formed a new wave band, 'Til Tuesday, with Mann providing bass and vocals.[11] They signed to Epic Records and released Voices Carry, their debut album, in 1985. The single "Voices Carry" reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100[12] and won that year's MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist.[13] According to Mann, "Voices Carry" was one of the first songs she wrote.[14]Stereogum described it as "an early indicator of Mann's penchant for character study, drawing outside the lines of boy-meets-girl love songs".[14] The success made Mann an early female MTV star. The Washington Post described her as "a neo-punk pop princess, a new wave glamour girl, all doe eyes, gangly limbs and spiky bleached hair with that long, braided tail snaking out from underneath".[5]
'Til Tuesday released Welcome Home, their second album, in 1986.[14] Mann sang vocals with Geddy Lee on the 1987 single "Time Stand Still" by Rush, and appeared in the music video.[15][16] 'Til Tuesday released their third and final album, Everything's Different Now, in 1988.[17] It demonstrated a significant development in Mann's songwriting but was a commercial failure. Mann said it had been abandoned by Epic following a change of staff.[14]
'Til Tuesday broke up in 1990 when Mann left to start her solo career.[15] She said later that her musical interests had changed, and that she was more interested in "acoustic guitar music" than the new wave pop of 'Til Tuesday.[14] Hausman, her former boyfriend, became her manager.[5] Epic did not release Mann from her record contract for another three years, which prevented her from releasing new material. It was the first of several disputes Mann had with record labels, which Hausman said had a lasting effect on her attitude to the music industry.[18]
1990–1995: Solo beginnings, Whatever and I'm with Stupid
Jon Brion (pictured) co-produced Mann's first three albums.
Mann recorded her first solo albums with the producer Jon Brion,[14] who had been a member of the 'Til Tuesday touring band.[1] Mann found working with Brion exciting and felt her songwriting improved with him. Together, they developed a sound that the Stereogum writer Doug Bleggi called "LA alternative".[14] Mann's debut solo album, Whatever, was released in 1993 on the independent label Imago. It earned positive reviews but did not meet sales expectations.[19][20] In 1994, Mann moved to Los Angeles.[21] She also toured as part of the British band Squeeze, playing her own songs and songs by Squeeze.[14]
After Mann finished her second album, I'm with Stupid, Imago encountered financial problems and delayed its release. Imago eventually sold it to Geffen, which signed Mann in 1994 and released I'm with Stupid in 1995.[18] According to Pitchfork, while Mann's solo albums demonstrated she was "a witty, self-possessed songwriter", she was still failing to meet commercial expectations, with sales in the low six figures.[19] Mann began to be seen as a relic of the 1980s.[14][22]Dick Wingate, the executive who signed 'Til Tuesday to Epic, described Mann as "the model of an artist who has been chewed up and spit out by the music business". He said disappointment and bad luck had made her distrustful of record labels.[18][20]
Later in the decade, Mann became a regular act at Largo, a Los Angeles nightclub that hosted performances from alternative songwriters including Brion, Elliott Smith, Fiona Apple and Rufus Wainwright.[18] This shaped Mann's songwriting; Largo fit Mann so well that the owner jokingly nicknamed it "Aimee Mann's clubhouse".[19]
Mann received wider recognition after she contributed songs to the 1999 film Magnolia, including "One", "Wise Up" and songs she was writing for her third album.[28] Two songs, "Save Me" and "You Do", were written for the film.[28] The film features dialogue taken from Mann's lyrics and a sequence in which the cast sing "Wise Up".[22] The director, Paul Thomas Anderson,[29] another Largo regular,[18] said he "sat down to write an adaptation of Aimee Mann songs".[22]
I can put out what I consider good music, with the players I want, the songs I want, the sequence I want, the artwork I want and I don't have to confer with a bunch of idiots about what they think, which is always wrong, and then to have to do this dance where you're trying to get them to think that they thought of the idea. It's just an embarrassing waste of your time. When I was on a major record label, nothing ever got done.
— Mann on independence from major record labels (2008)[30]
Mann took more control over the production of her third album, Bachelor No. 2.[31] It includes a song co-written with Elvis Costello, "The Fall of the World's Own Optimist".[32] Geffen refused to release the album, feeling it contained no hit singles.[19] In response, Mann sold homemade EPs of her new music on tour in 1999,[33] which she described as a "DIY fuck-you-record-company-I'm-selling-it-myself move".[14] She accepted an offer from Geffen to leave her contract, deciding to be "in charge of her own destiny".[31]
In 1999, Mann and Hausman formed their own label, SuperEgo Records.[34] With Mann's husband, the songwriter Michael Penn, they also established United Musicians, a collective working outside the major label system.[20][35] Using the money earned through royalties from Magnolia, Mann bought the Bachelor No. 2 masters from Geffen.[20] She sold 25,000 copies of the album via mail order from her website, a large amount for an independent artist.[19][36] After she secured a distribution deal,[36]Bachelor No. 2 sold 270,000 copies,[31] outperforming I'm with Stupid.[19]Bachelor No. 2 became the 28th-best-reviewed album of the decade, according to the aggregation website Metacritic.[37] The success established Mann as a career artist who could work outside of the major label system.[14]
In 2000, Mann and Penn performed together on a small tour, Acoustic Vaudeville, with the comedian Patton Oswalt.[38] In 2001, Mann sued Universal Music over the release of a greatest-hits compilation, The Ultimate Collection, which she had not authorized and considered "substandard and misleading".[39] The Boston Globe characterized the lawsuit as one of several challenges to major labels by female musicians that year, including Courtney Love and the Dixie Chicks.[40] That year, Mann was also a judge at the inaugural Annual Independent Music Awards, an award for promoting independent musicians.[41][42] She judged the awards again in 2011.[41]
2002—2004: Lost in Space and Live at St. Ann's Warehouse
Following the success of Magnolia and Bachelor No. 2, Mann had a mental breakdown and entered a period of depression.[1] She also had intrusive thoughts resulting from an accident when the car of a drunk driver flipped her tour bus.[4] In 2002, she entered the Sierra Tucson rehabilitation center with anxiety and depression, and PTSD triggered by her kidnapping as a child.[4]
Mann referenced her health problems obliquely in her fourth album, Lost in Space, released in August 2002.[43]Paste described it as "another marvelous collection of Mann's intimate portraits of lost love and broken people, all set to a wry pop soundtrack that often lilts at the precise moment that one would expect dour melancholy".[20]
In 2007, Mann contributed two original songs, "The Great Beyond" and "At the Edge of the World", to the soundtrack to the film Arctic Tale.[51] She also contributed vocals to "Unforgiven" on John Doe's album A Year in the Wilderness.[52]
In June 2008, Mann released her seventh album, @#%&*! Smilers. It features minimal electric guitar and an emphasis on keyboards.[30] It debuted on the Billboard 200 at number 32 and on the Top Independent Albums chart at number 2.[53]@#%&*! Smilers received mostly positive reviews,[54] with AllMusic writing that it "pops with color, something that gives it an immediacy that's rare for an artist known for songs that subtly worm their way into the subconscious ... Smilers grabs a listener, never making him or her work at learning the record, as there are both big pop hooks and a rich sonic sheen."[55] The artwork, by Gary Taxali, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Recording Package.[56]
In 2012, Mann released her eighth solo album, Charmer, comprising songs based on the theme that personal charm should not always be trusted. One song, "Crazytown", is about an alcoholic "manic pixie dream girl".[59] Two singles were released: "Charmer", with a music video directed by Tom Scharpling, and "Labrador", which features the actor Jon Hamm and references to Mann's music videos with 'Til Tuesday.[60] In the same year, Mann contributed vocals to Steve Vai's album The Story of Light on "No More Amsterdam" and recorded the song "Two Horses" for the soundtrack of the film Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie.[61]
In 2013, Mann appeared on the Ivan & Alyosha album All the Times We Had.[62] In February, she and Ted Leo formed a duo, the Both, and performed shows in Los Angeles and San Francisco.[63] They released an album on SuperEgo in April 2014; Spin described it as "the best thing either artist has ever done".[64] On July 22, Mann filed a lawsuit against MediaNet, saying they were distributing 120 of her songs on an expired license agreement.[65] She attempted to claim as much as $18 million in statutory damages.[66] Mann settled out of court in 2015.[67]
In January 2022, Mann began posting autobiographical comics on Instagram.[10] She said that making comics was similar to songwriting: "Having a short amount of time to make a point or to tell a little story ... It's by necessity very truncated."[84] She described making comics as a "weird, lonely, insular drive-yourself-crazy activity", unlike the communal activity of performing and recording music.[84] In 2023, Mann mentioned plans to create a graphic memoir.[84]
In April 2022, Mann displayed a series of her paintings, You Could Have Been a Roosevelt, at City Winery, Manhattan. The paintings are portraits of "the ten worst US presidents" and a selection of first ladies. Mann created them after promising her friend, the politician Antony Blinken, a painting for his White House office.[85] She said that Blinken "declined to have a portrait of Millard Fillmore on his wall, and I can't say I blame him".[85]
That year, Mann was dropped from a supporting slot on Steely Dan's tour. Donald Fagen, the co-founder of Steely Dan, denied rumors that he felt a female singer-songwriter would not suit their audience, and instead said that Mann was not a good musical fit. He apologized, saying he respected Mann and did not realize any commitment had been made. Mann accepted the apology and said it was plausible that Fagen did not know she had been announced for the tour.[86] She covered the Steely Dan song "Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)" on tour that year.[86]
On May 22, 2022, Mann led a lineup of women performers raising funds for the Magee Women's Institute at Novo, Los Angeles.[87] In January 2023, she launched an Audible podcast, Straw into Gold, in which she interviewed artists about the connection between art and trauma.[84]
Artistry
Pitchfork characterized Mann's music as "refined guitar pop filled with attuned details and characters more often associated with the best short stories".[74] The journalist Jon Pareles described Mann as a "formalist of pop songwriting" whose "verses, choruses and bridges arrive in their proper places and melodies trace a measured, symmetrical rise and fall".[88] The New York Times critic Ben Ratliff wrote of Mann's "urbane pop songs, melodically rich and full of well-worn sayings fitted into spiky couplets".[33] Mann said songwriting was "an exercise in order... To attempt to describe something — to make connections, to put pieces together, to try to sum up complicated ideas in a three-and-a-half minute song — that's trying to put chaos in order for me."[1]
Mann played the bass guitar with the Young Snakes, 'Til Tuesday and the Both. For her own shows, she generally plays acoustic guitar, finding it "more convenient".[8] On her first solo albums, Mann and the producer Jon Brion created a sound the Stereogum writer Doug Bleggi called "LA alternative". The style is associated with turn-of-the-century alternative acts such as Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith, Rufus Wainwright and Eels, all of whom worked with Brion in the 1990s.[14] Several of Mann's later albums were produced by Paul Bryan.[89]
In the 1990s, Mann came under pressure from her record company, Geffen, to write hit singles, which she found frustrating. When she attempted to write catchy and lyrically accessible songs, she became bored and could not finish them.[18] She felt that record companies attempted to "remove everything that's interesting" from her songs, and concluded: "My music is not going to sell outside a certain audience, so why not leave it alone so you don't alienate the people who actually like it?"[20] Mann said she was not interested in being a pop star, and said: "It takes a special skill to be a big star and I just don't have those skills, so there isn't much point in me pretending."[90]
Writing for the New Yorker in 2000, Nick Hornby wrote that Mann was "a fine, occasionally brilliant singer-songwriter, nothing more, nothing less, and this plainness of purpose has cost her dearly over the last fifteen, mostly calamitous, years".[32] He said she had not found wider success as she did not meet expectations for female singer-songwriters: "She is not one of the lads, like Sheryl Crow; she is outspoken rather than introspective, which means that she has little in common with the Carole King school; and she is much too grown-up and circumspect to want to bare her pain in the way that Tori Amos and Fiona Apple do."[32]
In 2006, Paste named Mann the 54th-greatest living songwriter, and NPR named her among the ten greatest living songwriters.[91][92] Robin Hilton of NPR wrote that she was "vastly underrated" and had "a real gift for piercing the heart of something, revealing instead of telling and wrapping it all up in inspired melodies".[91]
Lyrics
Mann is noted for her sharp and literate lyrics.[59] She explores dark subjects such as mental illness and suicide,[75] and writes about underdog characters who are lost, lonely or exist outside of society.[10] In Pitchfork, Chris Dahlen wrote of Mann's skill in writing about dark subjects without self-pity, and in using specific imagery to carry general meanings.[43] Another Pitchfork writer, Eric Torres, attributed Mann's penchant for underdog characters to her struggles in the music industry.[74]
Mann combines sad music and themes with humorous or sarcastic lyrics to create the sense of a narrator trying to hide their feelings. She felt this was sadder than simply stating the feelings directly.[93] She said: "I'm sure I'm the only person who thinks any lines or any moments are funny, but that's usually because they're the most accurate and bleak ones."[75] In the New York Times, Nate Chinen wrote that "the sugarcoated poison pill is a reliable device for Aimee Mann, a singer-songwriter given to ravaging implication and dispassionate affect".[94] Paul Thomas Anderson wrote that Mann was "the great articulator of the biggest things we think about: 'How can anyone love me?' 'Why the hell would anyone love me?' and the old favorite 'Why would I love anyone when all it means is torture?'"[22]
Many of the lyrics on Mann's 90s albums express her frustration with her record label.[32] Hornby noted that some found Mann's "self-righteous sense of grievance" irritating, such as the author Greil Marcus, who wrote that she was "still whining after all these years".[32] Hornby responded that pop music could express any mood and asked: "Who doesn't feel like whining sometimes?"[32]
Mann said she admires precision in lyrics: "I like a rhyme that's perfect and interesting. Some songwriting is so vague. It makes me yell at the radio, 'Home and alone do not rhyme!' I've been sloppy in the past, but I'm getting better over time."[59]
Influences
Mann said she was mainly influenced by "classic" 1970s chord progressions and melodies.[20]Elton John was the artist who was most important to her at an early age: "His melody, the chords, his singing ... There was something in the DNA of his melodic structure that I picked up on later and was influenced by."[95]
According to the musician Al Jourgensen of the band Ministry, he and Mann had a brief "dysfunctional" romance in Boston in the 1970s or 1980s.[96] Mann wrote "No More Crying" about their relationship.[6] Mann dated the 'Til Tuesday drummer Michael Hausman; after they separated, they remained friends and Hausman became her manager.[5] The actor and comedian Dave Foley said Mann wrote "Save Me" about him while they were in a relationship.[97]
In 1993, while Mann was recording Whatever,[27] she met the songwriter Michael Penn,[59] the brother of the actors Sean Penn and Chris Penn.[26] They married in 1997 and live in Los Angeles.[1][26] Mann said about Penn: "He's really a top-rated songwriter for me, and thank God, because how sad is it if you were with another singer-songwriter and you're like, 'Yeah, whatever, it's not my kind of thing'?"[74]
In 2008, Mann said she had attended Al-Anon, a support group for the families and friends of alcoholics, to deal with the exhaustion she felt from trying to help addicts she knew.[30] In 2020, she developed a nervous system disorder that gave her tinnitus, migraines, nausea and dizziness and prevented her from listening to music for a year. She believed the disorder was triggered by a combination of childhood trauma and the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic.[4]
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