Out with the new

Hard to believe that Aimee Mann has been around since the mid-’80s when her band Til Tuesday scored an MTV hit with the glossy pop of ‘Voices Carry’.

Discovering that ‘80s glam wasn’t for her, and refusing to yield to record company pressure to come up with more commercial material, she eventually went solo in 1990. Despite the critical success of albums such as Whatever and I’m With Stupid, she’s since endured more battles with the industry – most notably with Geffen Records, who refused to release her third solo album Bachelor Number 2.
Salvation came in the form of movie director Paul Thomas Anderson, who based his movie Magnolia around several of Mann’s songs. The soundtrack sold a million copies and she was Grammy-nominated (only to be pipped at the post by Phil Collins). Meanwhile the rejected album, which was eventually released on her own Superego label, sold in impressive numbers for an independent artist and has since become regarded as her best.
Not surprisingly given her own experiences, she has strong views on the current state of the music industry, where traditional sales are in sharp decline. “I happen to think there’s too much music around,” she offers “I mean, everybody has a MySpace page – even people who are just starting out have one, with tracks available on it. You can’t stop that and it’s probably going to get much worse – but I think consumers are being overloaded with music and that’s part of the problem. But the whole industry really is in trouble if people are not buying what you’re selling.”
Mann’s songs continue to be be used on the soundtracks to TV shows such as Melrose Place, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and movies such as I Am Sam, Cruel Intentions and Jerry Maguire – something she says she is more than grateful for.
“I always like to hear my music in movies and on TV shows,” she says. “It seems to add something to them, when they’re set in some kind of dramatic context. Apart from that, record sales going the way they are, I’m glad to have another outlet for what I do. I’d like to have more of my stuff used that way, but I leave that to my manager. You don’t want to sell yourself too easily, so we’re careful about how the songs are used.”
Her most recent album The Forgotten Arm – a concept album of sorts about a boxer – was denser, and arguably less accessible, than her previous couple of albums. Any clues as to how her long-awaited new one might sound?
“I’m actually finishing up the record right now; it’s very close to being done and when we’re really happy with it we’ll let it out. I think of it as a little art project. My aim was to make a record where I didn’t mind each song sounding different. It’s varied, with a lot of moog and distorted Wurlitzer and no electric guitars on some tracks, though the keyboards sound a lot like electric guitars. We really are trying to get a fresh sound so we’re going for first and second takes.”
Mann’s melodies and song structures tend to be based on classic ‘60s inspired pop – will the new album be influenced in any way by more modern music?
“Well, I don’t listen to a lot of new music,” she says. “That might sound surprising to some people but once you get out of the loop of listening to new stuff, it’s very hard to get back into it. Like, take the White Stripes for example. They have a new album out now and a lot of people I know are talking about it. But I haven’t really listened to any of their stuff. So I’m thinking ‘Should I get this one or should I start at the beginning and work my way up to the new one?’ It’s a dilemma but it all starts out with ‘What does it take to make you listen to something over and over again?’ I don’t know if I’m super picky or a snob or if it’s because of what I do. I hate to say this and it’s probably not going to sound good – but it’s often a case of where I don’t like to listen to something if I think it’s not as good as what I do.”
“But there is a lot of great stuff out there – old and new - and you always have those moments where you think ‘I wish I’d written that.’ I recently started making an effort at some sort of randomly listening to new stuff, but I didn’t get very far.”
Aimee Mann plays the Midlands Music Festival on Saturday July 28.