MANN'S MISSION

An Interview with Aimee Mann
BY ROBERT LOERZEL

A shorter version of this article originally appeared in Pioneer Press Newspapers on Oct. 12, 2000.

Aimee Mann was trapped in record-development purgatory two years ago.

Even though she'd scored the top 10 hit "Voices Carry" with her band 'Til Tuesday in 1985 and released two critically acclaimed solo albums, Mann's track record apparently wasn't good enough to earn the confidence of major-label bosses.

Mann thought she was writing some of the best songs of her career, but the execs at her label, Universal subsidiary Interscope, didn't hear anything that sounded like a hit single.

Mann started to feel as if her new music would never be released. The press began to portray her as a poster child for the many talented artists who suffer at the hands of bonehead music executives.

"I could have stayed with Interscope and worked on the record for another year… They would have lost interest anyway," Mann says. "What drove me out of there was an atmosphere of supreme indifference. I'm sure they didn't even listen to the whole record."

Since then, things have turned around for Mann.

She escaped the doldrums by buying back her recordings from Interscope and starting her own label, SuperEgo Records. She began selling a new CD, "Bachelor No. 2 or the last remains of the dodo," via the Internet. And she's drawn more raves from the critics and a growing number of fans.

Leaving her record label was, Mann says, "the best thing I could have done... You don't know what's ahead, but you take a chance, because you don't want to do the same thing over and over again."

Mann's newfound success would have been difficult to achieve if her music hadn't been featured so prominently in the 1999 film "Magnolia." Her songwriting for that quirky film's soundtrack earned her an Oscar nomination.

All of a sudden, the singer-songwriter who had been struggling even to release her music only months before was performing at the Academy Awards before a live television audience of millions. Mann says she owes much of her recent popularity to "Magnolia" director Paul-Thomas Anderson. Unlike many filmmakers, Anderson didn't add songs to his movie's soundtrack as an afterthought.

"Like one would adapt a book for the screen, I had the concept of adapting Aimee's songs into a screenplay," Anderson explains in the liner notes to the "Magnolia" soundtrack.

"He’s not a Hollywood guy," Mann says of Anderson. "He’s a very idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind talent… Music is really a part of the writing process for him... That he happened to be listening to my songs was very fortunate for me."

In one scene in "Magnolia," characters from various subplots scattered at different locations all begin singing along with the Mann song "Wise Up." The melody and words inexplicably draw the movie's scattershot story lines together, uniting the troubled characters in an emotional epiphany.

Some critics and filmgoers thought the scene was brilliant; others called it utterly ridiculous. When Mann first heard about it, she wasn't sure how Anderson would pull it off without it looking silly, she says, but the scene won her over.

"It's surreal, and I thought it was great," she says. "It was moving."

Mann also had a small part in the Coen Brothers' film "The Big Lebowski."

"That was kind of a point in my life when I was so sick of the music business that I would have done anything else," she says, explaining her decision to try acting. "I was a German nihilist girl, so my lines were in German, which made the acting easier."

Mann says she wasn't any more nervous to perform before a worldwide audience at the Academy Awards than she is at a more intimate concert.

The Oscars ceremony " is such a giant, military-like operation," she says. "You rehearse so much that it takes away any nervousness."

Mann is one of the few alternative rock songwriters to receive an Oscar nomination, following in the footsteps of Elliott Smith, who looked similarly out of place when he performed "Miss Misery" from the "Good Will Hunting" soundtrack at the Academy Awards in 1998.

"When I saw Elliott on that show, it just showed up everybody else," Mann says. "This is what songwriting it about."

Mann and Smith have both received more support from the movie business than the music business, she says.

"I think movies could be the salvation of people like Elliot and me," she says. "Radio's not going to do it. Radio is bought and paid for."

Four songs from the "Magnolia" soundtrack also appear on "Bachelor No. 2," which includes an additional nine songs. It's the sort of album that rewards a listener after repeated spins, as Mann's melodies and harmonies reveal subtle charms.

The lyrics often have a confessional air about them, as Mann delves into the insecurities

of romantic relationships and the frustrations of – you guessed it – dealing with record companies.

But Mann says it's a mistake to assume that everything she sings about is strictly autobiographical.

She sometimes puts herself into the mind-set of other people as she writes her lyrics.

"A lot of times it's not 'me' singing, but it's always something that I know about," she says. "Sometimes it's an exercise – I'll write a song in first person about someone I know to see if I can understand them."

Mann says female singer-songwriters are no longer pigeon-holed as appealing only to female listeners.

Years ago, she says, "Of course a man wouldn’t listen to a female singer. It was considered a novelty… There was this assumption that a man would never have anything to say that a man would be interested in hearing…

"I get asked this question: ‘Do you write from a woman’s perspective?’ No, I don’t. What does that mean?" Mann says.

Mann is married to singer-songwriter Michael Penn, and she has co-written songs with notable tunesmiths such as Elvis Costello and Glenn Tillbrook of Squeeze.

While collaborating with Tillbrook, "I was writing lyrics for him, so it’s a man’s take," Mann says. "But is it a scenario that I can put myself in? Of course."

She has co-written a number of songs over the years with Jon Brion, a partnership that seems natural to Mann.

"It’s like writing songs with myself. We think the same about harmony and lyrics."

Mann performs solo concerts as well as shows with Penn, which she says is fun was because she isn't always the person in the spotlight.

"The nice part is I get to listen to his songs, and I get to play bass. I like to be a musician that fits into a group."

On "Bachelor No. 2," Mann tried to capture the sound of pop songs from the mid-1960s.

"There was a certain drum sound I was aiming for, which is very small and dry," Mann says. "I just listened to a couple of Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick albums. I much prefer the place that drums have in old recordings."

In the meantime, while promoting "Bachelor No. 2," Mann was suing her old record label because it has put out an unauthorized CD of her greatest hits, called "Ultimate Collection." She says she offered to help Universal with selecting tracks and packaging the CD, but the company went ahead and released it without her participation.

It's a sore subject, prompting Mann to use some sharp language.

"When I heard that they were going to put out a collection called ‘The Ultimate Collection,’ I offered to help them… and they just told me to (expletive) off," Mann says. "So we’re taking them to court. They don’t have a right to put out those songs… I really take care in what I put out… There's (expletive) that's totally unauthorized, let alone on a record with my (expletive) name on it...It's unbelievable. It shows the hypocrisy."

This latest spat with Universal only confirms Mann's beliefs that the record industry doesn't know what it's doing.

The Internet and other technologies are opening up new paths for musicians to sell their music on their own.

Mann acknowledges it's a difficult way for someone without name recognition to get off the ground. If she had tried to sell her music on her own earlier in her career, she would have faced many obstacles.

"It never would have been possible for me to get a distribution deal, and there was no Internet," she says.

But she predicts that musicians interested in serious songwriting will find ways to put out their music without the help – or interference – of the big record companies.

"They're not going to touch the majors with a 10-foot pole," she says.

She says the "lowest-common-denominator music" that the major companies are marketing these days – frat-boy rap and slick teen pop – will eventually fade in popularity.

"When that stuff goes out of fashion, it's going to be abrupt and complete, and there's not going to be anything left," Mann says. "The major-label system is going down. They've gotten too big and too bloated and top-heavy."

www.aimeemann.com

© 2000 Pioneer Press Newspapers.
Photo by Sam Jones.