{"id":8472,"date":"2013-01-01T23:42:39","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T06:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=8472"},"modified":"2013-01-01T23:44:11","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T06:44:11","slug":"aimee-mann-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2013\/01\/aimee-mann-2\/","title":{"rendered":"AIMEE MANN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

AIMEE MANN<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Getting it right for her latest effort required a fresh start<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

After nearly three decades in the music biz and Grammy and Oscar nods under her belt, Aimee Mann wanted a new approach for Charmer<\/em>, her eighth solo album\u2014so she tossed her original batch of tunes. \u201cI had some songs and played them all back to back and was like, \u2018I\u2019m not crazy about these,\u2019\u201d says the 52-year-old singer-songwriter and actress. \u201cThey didn\u2019t really fit in with the kind of record I wanted to make, which was poppier.\u201d Produced by longtime bassist Paul Bryan and featuring a duet with Shins\u2019 frontman James Mercer, Charmer<\/em> provides buzzy pop foil to Mann\u2019s lyrical cynicism. She shared details\u00a0on the album\u2019s creation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What inspired Charmer<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The song \u201cCharmer\u201d started about a friend of mine who is charming in a delightful way. But in the process of writing, I was thinking about the different aspects of charm and realized, \u201cOh, this is darker than I first saw it.\u201d So it no longer became about him\u2014I thought, \u201cIf this song was written about me, I\u00a0wouldn\u2019t be flattered.\u201d It started to become about a character based on a bunch\u00a0of different people.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you prefer to write about characters?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even if I start out with a real person, it kind of has to turn into a character. It\u2019s more interesting to tweak the details of the plot in order to make your point. Sometimes you have to streamline, because if you\u2019re talking about one aspect, you don\u2019t want to have characters that are completely fleshed out and real because it gets off topic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"What about the musical direction?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was thinking about pop music and my personal definition of it. One of the first things that defined pop when I was a kid was Glen Campbell singing Jimmy Webb songs. In the \u201970s, I was focused on one song, \u201cJackie Blue\u201d by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. I kept going back and listening to it. And then stuff from the \u201980s, like Blondie and the Cars, that was a big influence. These are real pop songs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is the \u201980s influence in the synthesizers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When New Wave first came out, my visceral impression of it was, \u201cMy God, it\u2019s so mechanical. It sounds so machine-like!\u201d You go back now, and it\u2019s really just a rock band with a synthesizer. I found that really funny, that the impression that you get from this one extra, new element influences how you hear.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How did you team with James Mercer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

By a series of accidents, Paul Bryan and I ended up having drinks with [screenwriter] Aaron Sorkin. He started telling us about an idea he\u2019d had for a musical that he wanted to write one day. It was kind of like he was saying, \u201cIf I ever write this musical, would you write music for it?\u201d Of course! Paul and I went home and were like, \u201cBased on a couple of characters he told us about, just for fun, let\u2019s write a song.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cLiving a Lie\u201d was the song we came up with. I\u2019m sure that will never happen, because Aaron Sorkin has\u00a08 million projects he\u2019s doing, but you never know. For me it was super-flattering to have the conversation. Then we were left with this song\u2014I wasn\u2019t writing it for the record, but we were kind of like, \u201cMaybe we should see if we can find somebody to do this as a duet.\u201d James Mercer was the first name that we came up with. He\u2019s got such a strong voice and he\u2019s so iconic. We were lucky that he happened to be in town and willing, and he liked the song, God bless him.<\/p>\n

\u2013Amanda Farrah<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AIMEE MANN Getting it right for her latest effort required a fresh start After nearly three decades in the music biz and Grammy and Oscar nods under her belt, Aimee Mann wanted a new approach for Charmer, her eighth solo album\u2014so she tossed her original batch of tunes. \u201cI had some songs and played them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[4791,4792,2709,5694,3549,5695,5475],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8472"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8476,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8472\/revisions\/8476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}