Soundtrack Girl Interrupted

[Kayleigh Telega]

Inmany ways, it was like what I remembered from all of her previous records: intricately crafted, melodic songs wedded to deeply thoughtful, meticulously constructed, and sadly sardonic lyrics. But something had also subtly shifted. Most of the songs were now ballads, quiet, reserved. There was little electric guitar. The arrangements beautifully embellished the folk-based songs by blending acoustic guitar, piano, rich vocal harmonies, and a small string section.

I also remain especially fond of Bachelor No. 2 and the songs she contributed to the soundtrack of the P.T. Anderson film Magnolia from 1999. The latter songs have since been added to the track listing of the former album, which was originally released the year after the film appeared, so focusing on that 2000 release now opens up a rich world of eighteen 4-minute masterpieces.

Nearly two and a half decades since I first heard this song, I still feel a trap-door open up beneath me every time Mann reaches the final chorus to once again sing the title line, which, following the set-up of the third verse, hits with incredible power, like a ball-peen hammer to the heart.

What a lovely piece, Damon. A welcome break from the depressing world of politics. Although I've heard of Mann, I'm not familiar with her work. But I have my own set up musicians who've formed the soundtrack to my life, so I get the feeling.

Last week, my wife and I went to a (very good) Jason Isbell concert in Philadelphia. Long-time readers know I\u2019m a fan of his. But this show was special because his opening act was Aimee Mann, who\u2019s been making music for a lot longer than Isbell\u2014music I\u2019ve been listening to for nearly 40 years. That made the show a full-fledged double-header for me, and one that stirred up a lot of feelings\u2014about aging, about the place of music in my life, and in particular about the place of Mann\u2019s music in my life.

Growing up in the southern Connecticut suburbs of New York City in a broken home\u2014my mother disappeared after she suffered a mental breakdown in 1978, when I was eight years old, leaving my younger brother and I to be raised solely by our father\u2014I was often miserable. By the early \u201980s, I was spending hours a day watching music videos on the recently launched MTV. I\u2019d been obsessed with rock music since I was introduced by my parents at a very young age to Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and other artists of the 1970s. After my parents\u2019 divorce, withdrawing into an imaginative world of songs and concept albums and rock personas was a kind of balm for my lost and wounded soon-to-be-adolescent soul.

I never much liked the synth-pop that enjoyed heavy rotation on MTV in its early days. Still, the video for \u201CVoices Carry\u201D by the band Til Tuesday caught my ear and eye. The verse was weirdly creepy and unsatisfying. All tension, no release\u2014the kind of verse that makes you think, if this song doesn\u2019t have a great payoff in the chorus, I never want to hear it again. But then the chorus hit. This wasn\u2019t a Thompson Twins knock-off. This was The Beatles refashioned for post-New Wave tastes.

As for the video itself, it was awkward and pretentious, like much of what appeared on the channel in that era. But the lead singer of the band was striking\u2014a waif-like woman with spiked punky-blonde hair and enormous eyes who acts out the lyrics in a powerful and memorable way. The protagonist is involved with a man who abuses her and insists she never express her emotions, especially in public: \u201CHush hush / Keep it down now / Voices carry,\u201D the chorus repeats over and over. By the end of the song and video, the woman breaks free of the demand for silence while facing a barrage of verbal abuse for her insolent defiance.

It was striking. But also, to my 15-year-old self, forgettable. I didn\u2019t buy the single or the album it came from. For all I knew, the band with its noteworthy lead singer would be a one-hit wonder, never to be heard from again.

But that proved to be wrong. The following year, Til Tuesday was back with a follow-up, and its lead single grabbed me the moment its chorus began. \u201CComing Up Close\u201D has one of the loveliest chorus melodies I had ever heard up to that point in my life. To this day, it gives me chills. It was around this point that I learned the lead singer and songwriter of the band was named Aimee Mann. I was definitely intrigued. But I also continued to dislike the group\u2019s typically mid-80s synthetic sound. (I preferred REM and The Smiths.) So once again, I didn\u2019t purchase the single or the album\u2014or the third and final record Til Tuesday released two years later, by which time I was in college, distracted by a million people, experiences, books, and bands. If Mann hadn\u2019t launched a solo career a few years later, I may never have thought about her again.

In 1993, I was a 23-year-old graduate student finishing up an MA in history at New York University and transitioning to Michigan State, where I was beginning a Ph.D. in political science. I had been dating on and off for the previous 2-1/2 years the woman who would become my wife two years later. Mann\u2019s solo debut was one of a handful of soundtracks to that moment of my life.

All the promise I\u2019d heard on those early Til Tuesday songs finally reached full flower on the record. The melodies and lyrics were now far more accomplished and mature. The thin and sterile synth-saturated sound was gone, replaced with a movable feast of alternative-rock arrangements, each song living in its own aural universe perfectly crafted to suit its needs.

I loved the album and lived with it almost exclusively for months. To this day, putting it on both plunges me back to that specific time in my life\u2014before marriage, before kids, before mortgage payments, before a steady career\u2014and reminds me of what a powerful statement Mann made right out of the gate.

But that doesn\u2019t mean I proved to be the most loyal fan. Mann has had a rocky career, marked at first by rancorous public clashes with her record companies, who expected her to sell more records than she did and responded by being difficult and unsupportive. That led to some long gaps between releases, and then to muted promotional campaigns for her albums and singles. This became the norm once she went fully independent with her third album\u2014the magnificent Bachelor No. 2 (2000)\u2014and lacked corporate backing to help get the word out.

My life has also seen rocky patches, both at work and at home\u2014and times when I haven\u2019t paid close attention to new music. I\u2019d always notice at some level of awareness that Mann had a new album coming or freshly released. Usually I\u2019d buy and make an effort to listen to it, but often the effort was half-hearted and fleeting. In most cases, one or two songs made a lasting impression; occasionally it was three or four. As the years and the decades flew by, that added up to a decent-sized list of songs that meant something to me. But they never seemed to really shake me awake, or demand my full attention. Mann was mainly supplying background music to the episodic unfolding of my life.

This finally changed a few years ago, when my brother (my closest musical confidante and a talented singer-songwriter himself) began raving about Mann\u2019s 2017 record, Mental Illness. This was the first of her albums, released five years after the previous one (Charmer from 2012), that really hadn\u2019t registered with me at all. I heard my brother\u2019s praise and made note of it. But it took several more enthusiastic comments from him over the next few months to convince me to take a close listen.

It was an album of stunning beauty, emotional intimacy, and vulnerability. And I couldn\u2019t get enough of it. I craved more. So I did something that, for me, is pretty unusual: I went deep-sea diving back into Mann\u2019s career, paying special attention to the albums she had released since my attention had begun to flag. What I discovered is that, although her art had indeed reached a new standard of refinement and excellence on Mental Illness, she\u2019d consistently been operating on a much higher level for a much longer time than I\u2019d realized.

Every album contains treasures, with gems scattered across its distinctive musical landscape. Yes, she takes her time\u2014in the old days she took three years between releases; over the past decade it\u2019s become four or five\u2014but the results always display songwriting craftmanship on the highest levels.

In my research into Mann\u2019s past, I also learned more about her personal life than I\u2019d ever known, including her recurring struggles with serious anxiety and depression. And how both were made worse by those early conflicts with record companies. And how the roots of these difficulties could ultimately be found (as they usually are) in childhood traumas, including her parents\u2019 rancorous divorce, which led to an episode well summarized in an LA Times story from three years ago:

Her parents divorced when she was 3, after which Mann\u2019s mother and her new boyfriend kidnapped Mann. They took her to Europe and traveled around. Mann\u2019s father was searching for her via a private detective for nearly a year when she was found in England and returned home.

\u201CBy the time I saw my father again, it was like he was a stranger, and then I didn\u2019t see my mother again until I was 14,\u201D she says. \u201CI think having two parents where you spend so much time away from them, and then they just don\u2019t seem like parents anymore\u2014that lays the groundwork for later problems.\u201D

3a8082e126