STOP THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW IF YOU CAN’T DO TODAY AIMEE MANN TELLS WIND BACK WEDNESDAY
- Bernard Zuel
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
At the weekend a most unexpected, and only slightly more unlikely, reunion occurred when Til Tuesday jumped in the van again for an ‘80’s/’90s-focused (or as the Americans thought of it, “new wave”) music festival in the USA called Cruel World. Among the other acts were the likes of Alison Moyet, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, New Order and The Go-Gos, Blancmange, Buzzcocks, OMD and Garbage.
They may not have been a big act back in the day compared with some of those names, with one significant hit in Voices Carry, but Til Tuesday had devoted fans, not least in the ranks of the music press (yes, I was one) and then post-life when singer/songwriter Aimee Mann’s brilliance-studded solo career cast a retrospective glow on the band’s work.
Which today is an excuse to return to 2001 when Mann’s solo career, which had seen two fabulous high-res pop records slide by unappreciated (the second of them was called I’m With Stupid and as she told me in an interview in the mid-90s, that title was aimed directly at her label), was riding a new wave thanks to a landmark film, a less stupid record company run by her, and fate finally smiling on a third album that had seemed cursed but now was golden.
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AIMEE MANN MAY HAVE REWRITTEN THE BOOK on victimhood in the music industry. Her three solo albums were recorded for different companies, though none was released by the company for which it was recorded. In the 1990s, her first label went under and her second was absorbed by a bigger rival. Each time she was cut by new management who wanted no leftovers from the "past".
Her third album was recorded for Interscope, home to hard-edged Los Angeles gangsta rap and Marilyn Manson. The label's head, Jimmy Iovine, reportedly wrote a memo saying, "Aimee doesn't really expect us to release this, does she?"That record, Bachelor No. 2, finally emerged last year, two years after it was recorded, and only because Mann bought back the rights from the record company and released it herself on her SuperEgo label.
Doing so put her into significant debt. At first the album was available only on the Internet, but it has now sold 200,000 copies.
"They're incredible figures," Mann says. "It just goes to show [how] one person with a modem and a fax machine can do more work than a record company that can't be bothered. And it says that there is a huge audience out there for artists like me. OK, it's not as big as Eminem's audience, but it's foolish to overlook it.
"[People are] tired of buying horrible records, that have maybe one good song, by bands who shouldn't have been allowed to make a record until they'd been around a few more years. Or records that are like genetically engineered music."
Mann will be 41 this year. She has been making records since 1984, after moving to Boston from Virginia. Her first exposure came with 'Til Tuesday, which had a hit, Voices Carry, in 1985 and folded four years later. Mann's solo work quickly caught the ears of songwriters such as Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze, Elvis Costello and Jules Shear, all of whom at some stage wrote with her.
Mann's songs have the strong melodies of pop classics, with direct and often pungent lyrics that veer between the romantically cynical and the cynically romantic. Songwriters line up to work with her. Salivating critics rate her as one of the best songwriters around. But in a twist worthy of this tortured tale, it took a film-maker to recognise what the record company executives couldn't.
A few years ago, Paul Thomas Anderson, whose film about the LA porn industry, Boogie Nights, had become a hit, came across her songs via his girlfriend, singer/songwriter Fiona Apple. He had an idea for a film based on the sort of characters Mann has always written about, people who bruise easily, who love and hurt, who betray and regret.
He played her music as he wrote the script, for Magnolia, factoring in where those songs could appear in the film and even using her lines as dialogue. Magnolia was nominated for three Oscars last year (including a nod for Mann's music, which led to her performing at the awards).
By this time, Bachelor No. 2 had secured an independent distributor and was in stores (it was released in Australia last month). The Magnolia soundtrack, on which she sang eight songs, eventually sold about 500,000 copies. This kind of success, of course, led to an offer from a major record company: Warner Music, which released the Magnolia soundtrack, came calling.
But, as Mann explains, she knocked back the offer as soon as she heard the record company's reasoning.
"Warner Bros wanted to sign me for [Bachelor No.2] but they basically said, 'We're not going to support Magnolia, we're not really going to do anything more unless we sign you to a contract because why should we bother if we don't have your next record and the one after that?' And we were, like, 'Why the f-- should we sign with you if you're not even going to work the goddamn record you have?'
"My manager said, with these people it's always tomorrow ... but if they're not working today's record, what guarantee is there that they will work the next record?"
She pauses to calm herself a bit. "Part of why this happened to me a lot [in the past] is I put up with it. I should have gotten out a long time ago. Quite frankly, I probably couldn't have got out of my contract, but I think that for me, or for most artists, the mistake we make is in looking for reasonableness, looking for logic. Don't look for logic; these people aren't logical."
Bachelor No. 2 has a song that addresses the executives who couldn't see the quality in her material. In Nothing Is Good Enough, Mann says: "Critics at their worst could never criticise the way that you do/No, there's no-one else I find to undermine or dash a hope quite like you do/And you do it so casually, too." But Mann says the bitterness has been leached now. Well, most of it.
Anyway, she insists, bitterness can be fun.
"I think it is funny. The whole idea of being bitter is funny," she says, laughing. "My concept of bitterness is the cranky old man, you know, 'Goddammit!' You can't really be lighthearted unless you're truly serious about something."
Otherwise you're just glib.
"Glib is definitely not my cup of tea."
For six years the Virginia-raised Mann and her partner, singer/ songwriter Michael Penn (brother of Chris and Sean) have lived in Los Angeles. It's an industry town and this has helped Mann - her songs have cropped up on TV shows and film soundtracks including Jerry Maguire and Beverly Hills 90210 - but it's not exactly where you expect to find independent artistry.
"There are a lot of creative people. There are a lot of horrible narcissists, too, but they're pretty easy to avoid. You can really pick them out," Mann says. "One of the funny things about LA is it really lives up to all the clichés about it. The traffic's terrible, the weather's great, the air is bad, the people are shallow. Well, of course, they want to be on TV, but they're not all like that."
Mann's sense of humour lies deep in her songs. She confesses what may strike many as a strange association: her companions are comedians.
"Although there are a lot of musicians out here, most are that sort of LA, 'I'm going to put a project together for the marketplace, I'm going to make it happen'. They're a little too savvy. But ... while the comic's steady work is to be in a sitcom, they're also writers and stand-up comedians. They're able to hang onto their integrity a bit more."
Though she may be hanging with the comics, don't expect the new songs she is writing to be radically different. Not when she describes one of her more recent influences, the beautifully downbeat pop whisperer Elliott Smith.
"I want to hear his depressing personal anguish, guitar and harmonies, personal whispering saddest songs possible and that's what I want from him," she says. "And I don't think people look to me for rock songs or a good time party dance music."
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