Aimee Mann
Aimee Elizabeth Mann is an American singer-songwriter. She is noted for her sardonic and literate lyrics about dark subjects, often describing underdog characters. She has released ten albums as a solo artist.
Mann was born in Richmond, Virginia, and studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. In the 1980s, after playing with the Young Snakes and Ministry, she co-founded the new wave band 'Til Tuesday and wrote their top-ten single "Voices Carry". 'Til Tuesday released three albums and disbanded in 1990 when Mann left to pursue a solo career.
Mann's first two solo albums, Whatever and I'm with Stupid, earned positive reviews but low sales. She achieved wider recognition for her soundtrack for the Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia. Her song "Save Me" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal. Following conflict with her record company, Geffen, Mann released her third album, Bachelor No. 2, on 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.
In 2014, Mann released an album with Ted Leo as the Both. Mann also paints and makes comics, and has appeared in films and television series including The Big Lebowski, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Steven Universe, The West Wing and Portlandia. Her awards include the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for Mental Illness. She was named one of the greatest living songwriters by NPR and Paste.
Early life
Mann was born at the Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, on September 8, 1960. She had two brothers and two stepbrothers. When she was three, her mother had an affair and became pregnant and her parents divorced. Mann was kidnapped by her mother and her new boyfriend and taken to Europe, where they traveled. Mann's father, a marketing executive, hired a private detective, who brought her back from England a year later to a new stepmother and two stepbrothers. Mann said her father seemed "like a stranger" when they were reunited. The kidnapping gave Mann post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety around traveling later in life. She did not see her mother again until she was 14. She forgave her decades later, saying her mother had been "trapped on every side".Mann grew up in Bon Air, Virginia, and attended Midlothian High School in Chesterfield County. She was withdrawn and would not talk, and her father and stepmother sent her to a psychiatrist. 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." Mann learned to play her brother's guitar when she was confined to bed with glandular fever at the age of 12. As a teenager, she enjoyed David Bowie and Iggy Pop and was inspired by punk and new wave music. She said: " 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."
In 1978, feeling she did not fit in the "normal world", Mann enrolled in Berklee College of Music in Boston to study bass guitar. She had wanted to learn the bass as a child, but her family ridiculed her, saying it was unladylike. She lived on $25 a week, running in the mornings and practicing intensely. After 18 months, she dropped out and joined the Boston punk band the Young Snakes on bass. She was unhappy in the band, saying the other members objected to her writing love songs or music they considered too melodic. She joined the band Ministry, which she said helped her learn to write songs efficiently. In the early 1980s, she worked at Newbury Comics in Massachusetts.
Career
1980s: 'Til Tuesday
At Berklee, Mann formed a new wave band, 'Til Tuesday, with Mann on bass and vocals. 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 and won that year's MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. According to Mann, "Voices Carry" was one of the first songs she wrote. Stereogum described it as "an early indicator of Mann's penchant for character study, drawing outside the lines of boy-meets-girl love songs". 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".In 1986, 'Til Tuesday released their second album, Welcome Home. Mann sang backing vocals on "The Faraway Nearby" from the Cyndi Lauper album True Colors, released that year. She sang with Geddy Lee on the 1987 single "Time Stand Still" by Rush, and appeared in the music video. In 1988, 'Til Tuesday released their final album, Everything's Different Now, with songs influenced by Mann's breakup with the singer-songwriter Jules Shear. It demonstrated a significant development in Mann's songwriting, and included a song co-written with Elvis Costello, "The Other End of the Telescope". Everything's Different Now was a commercial failure; Mann said it had been abandoned by Epic following a change of staff.
'Til Tuesday broke up in 1990 when Mann left to start her solo career. 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. In 2025, Mann said: "To be honest, I was the weakest link. My vocals were super high and kind of weird and sort of punky... I'm surprised we ever got a record deal. But it's an era where we were right in the wave of a certain sound at a certain time, and I think we did that really well for a while." Michael Hausman, the 'Til Tuesday drummer and Mann's former boyfriend, became her manager. 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.
1990–1995: Solo beginnings, ''Whatever'' and ''I'm with Stupid''
Mann recorded her first solo albums with the producer Jon Brion, who had been a member of the 'Til Tuesday touring band. 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". 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. In 1994, Mann moved to Los Angeles. She also toured as part of the British band Squeeze, playing her own songs and songs by Squeeze. In 1995, Mann lived for about six months in London, where she befriended the Labour politician Tony Banks, a fan of her music.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. 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. Mann began to be seen as a relic of the 1980s. Dick Wingate, the executive who signed 'Til Tuesday to Epic, described her as "the model of an artist who has been chewed up and spit out by the music business", whose disappointment and bad luck had made her distrustful of record labels.
1995–1999: Film work and ''Magnolia''
Mann recorded a cover of the 1968 song "One" by Harry Nillson for the 1995 tribute album For the Love of Harry: Everybody Sings Nilsson. She wrote "Wise Up" for the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, but the director, Cameron Crowe, felt it did not fit. It was included on the Jerry Maguire soundtrack. In 1997, Mann recorded a cover of "Nobody Does It Better", the theme song of the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, for the album Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project. Mann contributed her song "Amateur" to the film Sliding Doors and made a cameo in the film The Big Lebowski as a German nihilist, both released in 1998.Later in the decade, Mann became a regular act at Largo, a Los Angeles nightclub where Brion hosted performances from alternative songwriters including Elliott Smith, Fiona Apple and Rufus Wainwright. This shaped Mann's songwriting; Largo fit her so well that the owner jokingly nicknamed it "Aimee Mann's clubhouse".
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. She wrote "Save Me" and "You Do" for the film. Magnolia features dialogue taken from Mann's lyrics and a sequence in which the cast sing "Wise Up". The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, another Largo regular, said he "sat down to write an adaptation of Aimee Mann songs".
The Magnolia soundtrack was certified gold. "Save Me" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal and an Academy Award for Best Original Song; Mann performed it at the 72nd Academy Awards. The Los Angeles Times described "Save Me" as Mann's masterpiece, which "solidified Mann's stature as an esteemed songwriter", and Pitchfork named it among the best songs of the 1990s. Mann later said the song "really gave a blood transfusion to my career. But it wasn't like I went from playing to five people to 5,000 people. It was just a real influx of energy." The success caused Mann stress, as she felt pressure to capitalize on it and tour heavily.