“A real Beatles thing”: How Aimee Mann channelled the Fab Four for ‘Save Me’
In a shock to absolutely no one, there are quite a lot of artists who vie to the claim of having been inspired by The Beatles. Common a line as it may be, however, it’s not to say that their reasons for being so are invalid – after all, who else has defined music as much as the Fab Four and, in the case of its two surviving members, have a legacy solidified in memoriam which you’ve stuck around long enough to see for yourself? That feat is nowhere near as easy to achieve through actions as it is to sum it up in words, and it’s because of this that a legion of protégés, including Aimee Mann, will still readily fall at their feet.
However, in many ways, Mann has more to credit the Fab Four for than most because their pioneering sound was indeed the blueprint for her biggest hit, ‘Save Me’. The song, officially released in 2000 but first appearing on the soundtrack for the film Magnolia the year before, lyrically laments “the feeling that you’re fragmenting, and looking to other people to hold you together,” she later explained, but the true hail back to the Beatles came in its sonic position.
Stripped back to a sense of acoustic vulnerability, Mann said ‘Save Me’ had “a real Beatles thing” going on in all aspects of its production, from the swooning harmony of its backing vocal to the bareness of the guitar and drums: “I always loved the way Ringo’s playing was always so stripped down: he wouldn’t necessarily just play 8th notes on the hi-hat,” she enthused. “So I wanted to try it with the guitar playing the 8th notes and the drums laying back a little.” Indeed, the idea of “laying back” was pertinent in various respects – Mann enjoys the quiet notoriety of being a lesser-known artist but still likes to credit her wide-ranging inspirations wherever she can.
Channelling the sonic spirit of the Beatles was one thing, but the song still relied on Mann’s ethereal vocal to steer it through a wash of chilled psychedelia. She does so, fittingly, by keeping things simple – there are no extravagant riffs or frills in her voice instead with its calmness oozes a sense of peace and contentment akin to something like ‘Blackbird’ by her Liverpudlian heroes. The two wouldn’t be out of place alongside each other, but that seems to be exactly Mann’s aim.
Ironically, however, in the swirling pleas for help conveyed in the lyrics to ‘Save Me’, the singer managed to give an overwhelming sense of comfort to those it was touched by. Take Dave Foley, for example; the comic actor Mann claimed the song was inspired by. She said he “once told me that he was afraid he was just incapable of sustaining love in a relationship, which I used right there in that last line.” In Foley’s version of events, he confirmed that ‘Save Me’ was like “a balm to [his] soul” at the time, further explaining that, “This was also a hugely important song – and hugely important moment – in my life that sort of sent me into my single life after that for the next five or six years.”
Whether through the Fab Four’s sonic inspiration or lyrics taken from the pains of those around her, it’s clear that Aimee Mann is an artist who forms ideas from various places in her world and turns them into gems. With ‘Save Me’, that creative license gained her acclaim and an Oscar nod to boot – but had she won that year, the Beatles should have been credited in the speech.
