The five albums that shaped Aimee Mann
Among the crop of female singer-songwriters that exploded on the 1990s charts, Aimee Mann seemingly looked set to join the ranks of Sheryl Crow or Alanis Morissette in catapulting stardom.
But Mann didn’t want it. Burnished in the era of punk, early gigs fronting post-punk Boston band The Young Snakes, a brief spell in future industrial juggernaut Ministry back when they were an aggro-synthpop outfit, and the new wave success of ‘Til Tuesday had forged an artist ambivalent at best about clamouring for pop’s lofty peaks.
Yet, the mainstream eventually opened its fickle arms. Pursuing a detour into acoustic-centred sunny rock masking an acerbic lyrical core, Mann forged a distinctly complex voice beneath the beguiling gentleness behind Whatever, or I’m with Stupid.
It was the 1999 soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia that stood as most people’s introduction to Mann’s bittersweet songcraft, penning nine original tracks for the film, including the mammoth ‘Save Me’, which largely sits as Mann’s defining number to this day. Since then, Mann has remained doggedly committed to her independence, releasing a string of records on her SuperEgo label to ensure her uncompromising charted course.
It’s always interesting to take a peek at any artist’s record collection and glean which exact albums stand as the most formative. Mann gave a revealing insight into her life soundtrack, appearing on the Sound Opinions podcast in 2022 and selecting the five LPs that shaped her future songwriting. Up first was Neil Young’s country-tinged mammoth seller Harvest, a deeper immersion into his rootsy early 1970s stroll, complete with orchestral flourish, one babysitter’s spin made quite the impact on young Mann, engrossed by numbers like ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’, if taking umbrage with ‘A Man Needs a Maid’s perceived sexist undertones.
“Even as a little kid, you kind of knew that something important was being talked about,” Mann recalled. “Which really stuck with me, the idea that you can talk about really kind of important things or deep subjects in a very personal way, like an almost conversational way.”
Staying in the same era, Mann picks out Steely Dan’s Can’t Buy a Thrill debut for pick number two, offering a unique read to the duo’s acerbic lyricism, and singling out Donald Fagen’s distinct singing style for particular praise. “I love his weird voice, I always have because it’s so him, like nobody else sounded like that,” she said. “He wasn’t doing the fake blues southern accent that everybody else was at the time.” When dwelling on the pair’s songwriting, Mann felt she could detect a darker edge perhaps unnoticed by even long-time fans, “There’s a lot of pain and trauma under those lyrics.”
Mann then cast her mind back to the soundtrack of her first musical forays, highlighting a likewises quasi-punk that was similarly shaped by the new wave yet reached for a more enduring songbook once expectations were shaken off. “He just jumps into language, twists it and shapes it, and turns it in a way that nobody else does,” she tells on Elvis Costello’s acclaimed Imperial Bedroom. “The production on the record was so interesting. Like a lot of different sounds. It wasn’t like set up the mic and have the rock band play, it was more of a studio creation… I listened to that record over and over.”
For the final two, Mann plumbed for 1993’s Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things by The Loud Family, one of the many projects of jangly power pop maestro Scott Miller that Mann credits as her favourite of all his works, then rounding off her curation with Elliott Smith’s XO from 1998, again commending Smith’s ability, just like Young, of handling the darker sides of life in a way that’s candidly poetic. “The honesty and the brutal bleakness of his lyrics was definitely an inspiration,” she concluded. “A reminder of like you can write about whatever you want to, and there’s nothing that should be off the table.”
The five albums that shaped Aimee Mann:
- Neil Young – Harvest
- Steely Dan – Can’t Buy a Thrill
- Elvis Costello – Imperial Bedroom
- The Loud Family – Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things
- Elliott Smith – XO
