Copyright 1999 Time-Warner, Inc.
Time Magazine
December 13, 1999
LENGTH: 498 words
SECTION: Music
HEADLINE: The Sweet Sound of Magnolia: Aimee Mann's tales of romantic
distress find emotionally satisfying release on a vibrant new sound track
BYLINE: David E. Thigpen
When word leaked that Aimee Mann was recording the sound track to director
Paul Thomas Anderson's hotly awaited film Magnolia, it was hard to
know which was the bigger surprise: that a maverick songwriter from pop's
margins had landed such a plum job, or that Mann was releasing anything
at all.
To understand Mann's place in the pop universe, imagine, if you would, crossing
Kurt Cobain with Emily Dickinson. Their offspring-- literate, bitingly introspective,
deeply contemptuous of money and fame-- would be a lot like Aimee Mann.
Because of hard luck and an incurable case of artistic independence, the
gifted Los Angeles folk-pop soloist has been left untouched by the wave
of acclaim that buoyed Jewel, Tori Amos and the Lilith crowd.
In two solo albums of exceptionally beautiful tunes and casually caustic
commentary on the pitfalls of romantic relationships, Mann, 39, has remained
a cult-size pleasure. Timing has been her enemy. Whatever, her fine
1993 solo debut, came out just as her record label, Imago Records, hit the
financial skids. Her next album, I'm With Stupid, languished in legal
limbo until Geffen Records released it-- two years late. And early this
year it looked as if the curse might strike again: as Mann neared completion
of a new work, Bachelor No. 2, Geffen merged with Interscope Records, whose
executives ordered her back into the studio to come up with a hit single.
That request left Mann "beyond not interested." To get out of
her contract, she had to buy back her own master tapes. "I had had
it,"she explains. "Now I understand what Prince went through.
I was ready to cheerfully quit the business forever." Fortunately,
this is when Paul Thomas Anderson stepped in. While writing the script for
Magnolia, Anderson heard a tape of some of Mann's new songs and like
them so much he began building characters around them. Claudia, the lonely
cokehead played by Melora Walters, was inspired by the song "Deathly."
"Everything [Aimee] seemed to be thinking were things that I was thinking,"
the Boogie Nights auteur writes in Magnolia's liner notes. Mann's
songs were inadvertently attuned to Anderson's central theme: emotional
rescue.
The result of this symbiosis is Music from the Motion Picture Magnolia
(Reprise), Mann's first release in four years. It includes eight new songs
in a curvaceous, melodically rich style evocative of Burt Bacharach and
the Beatles. Two of the best songs, "You Do" and "Save Me,"
Mann wrote for Magnolia; other were lifted from bachelor No. 2, to
be released next year on her new indie label, SuperEgo. Magnolia
may be the best thing to have happened to sound tracks since Mike Nichols
sat down with Simon and Garfunkle and came up with The Graduate. While it's
unlikely to put an end to the star-packed sound tracks so popular now, Magnolia
should bring wider exposure to a songwriting talent full of the soulfulness
that today's commercially obsessed pop so often lacks and so badly needs.