Aimee Mann first came to the world's attention via her '80s pop outfit 'Til Tuesday and its still catchy as hell hit "Voices Carry", but spent the years after that band's breakup holding on to a cult fan base for her solo material and getting bounced off label after label. It wasn't until her friend Paul Thomas Anderson decided to use a batch of Mann's songs in his 1999 film Magnolia, a move which helped the singer/songwriter find a whole new audience and critical acclaim. In the years that followed, she has released some incredible albums of deeply emotional pop that perfectly captures the stumbling beauty of living with exacting detail. Though she hasn't released an album since 2008, Mann has been busy touring, prepping new songs for a recording session to take place in the fall, and helping put the finishing touches on a Broadway version of her 2005 concept album The Forgotten Arm. Videosyncrasy caught up with Ms. Mann at a studio in L.A. where she was preparing for an upcoming slate of shows, including this Saturday's appearance at the Oregon Zoo.
Live video of 'Til Tuesday playing live in Detroit in 1985
I have no memory of this. Look how stylish these guys were. Look at those clothes.
So you don't know what this was from? It looks like it was filmed for a concert videotape or something...
None at all. It seems like there's different camera angles and stuff. Michael Hausman ['Til Tuesday's drummer] is the one that would remember. He's the guy who remembers stuff like this. In general, I was never that thrilled about things like this being filmed. Makes me really uncomfortable. 1985? Yikes.
How do you feel about having so much material on YouTube like this featuring you?
I think, like in life, once you're done with it, it's like "Ehhhh...I'm through with that phase." It seems natural to have it just disappear. So, the idea that every filmed moment of everyone's life is frozen in time on YouTube feels a little counter the natural decay of styles when you've moved on from a thing and moved into a different thing. The other side of that...there's so much of it that's it's almost hard to imagine people wanting to sort through it in the first place. Seeing the line of suggestions and it seems like there's all this stuff out there, which is different from having the one embarrassing video where your hair looked funny. Knock yourself out! There's a million of them!
A clip of Mann appearing on an episode of Portlandia.
How did you end up working on this show?
I'm very good friends with Fred Armisen. He and Carrie had this idea for the sketch because Carrie had hired a cleaning service and the girl who showed up was a girl in a band that she knew. It was this weird thing that really happened to her and they started riffing on it and they said, "We gotta get somebody we know."
How long were you in Portland for?
They filmed all day. Just here for a day.
It's so great that Sarah McLachlan was a part of this too.
I know! That was really great. I think while we were doing it, they weren't totally sure that she was going to agree to be in it. Even a couple of days before they weren't totally sure. It really does put the cherry on top to have her actually there.
You've done a fair bit of acting over the years. Do you like that or would you rather just stick with music?
I think acting's really hard, honestly. I'm really impressed with people that can do it. The only circumstance in which I can do it at all if I'm playing myself and there are no strong emotions to be portrayed and that I don't have to memorize any lines.
A video for the song "31 Today" (found on Mann's 2008 album @#%&*! Smilers) featuring comedienne Morgan Murphy and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait.
Did you know what Morgan was going to do ahead of time or was this all improvised?
They had some stuff worked out and some she probably improved. She's good friends with Bobcat Goldthwait. And I think the two of them just had this casual moment of, "Let's shoot this goofy video." And I had just written this song and done a version of this song. A lot of it was planned because we did a couple of takes of it, so there had to beats that we hit. She definitely does a lot of improv within it.
How hard was it to keep your composure throughout the filming?
I think that because she's doing stuff where I can't really see it, I had to tell myself, "You know what? Just don't look over there." She's hilarious.
How did Bobcat Goldthwait get involved in this?
Because the two of them were friends. I had met him a couple of times. She used to work on Jimmy Kimmel's show and I think he was the director on that show for a while. I visited her a couple of times, so I met him here and there over the years.
A video for the Rush song "Time Stand Still", a track recorded with Mann for the 1987 album Hold Your Fire
Do you still get a lot of diehard Rush fans asking about this or working with the band?
If you are a Rush fan, you are a diehard Rush fan. I feel like there's literally no casual Rush fans. People who like Rush never go, "Yeah, those guys are pretty good." If you like Rush at all, you are in for life, which I think is adorable. It's funny. It's a segment of the population that would ordinarily never listen to my kind of music or know it, but that I have this weird connection to a totally different music world. People definitely know that song and I get conferred sort of semi God-like status from the Rush fans because I worked with them.
Do you remember what your reaction was to the concept of this video?
I do, I even remember the director's name, it was Zbigniew Rybczyński. This Polish director and I even remember going "That is a GREAT name." At the time, we were like "This is the greatest, most revolutionary video idea ever." And it was. Within the scope of what video effects could achieve and what videos could do, it was pretty groovy.
After seeing them live and seeing the documentary about Rush, they seem like guys who have great senses of humor...
They're very funny. That was the main thing I took away from that. I mean, Neal is pretty serious. They were very, very funny. And that was a real surprise.
Video for the song "Freeway", found on Mann's 2008 album @#%&*! Smilers
Who came up with the concept for this video?
That was this friend of mine Michael Blieden, I don't think he's working there now, but he was part of the Jimmy Fallon show, which Morgan also works on. He did all their video pieces. He's really fantastic and he directs and writes on the spot. He directed some videos that I did for one of my Christmas shows. That was all him coming up with stuff for us to say and writing on the spot. He had this idea for the video which was these two oddball dancers behind me and I'm singing seriously.
Did this take a long time to get together?
We probably were working for several hours. I think that's mostly an editing thing. I don't think we were there that long. I just watched it and the lighting doesn't really change. It doesn't get dark or anything. I don't think we spent that much time on it.
Do you like doing videos like this or do you just see this as a necessary evil to promote your music?
I enjoy it if I'm doing it with somebody great like Michael, but I don't think it that way personally. So I don't ever go, "Oh, I've got this great idea that's going to be really funny or really great." I don't know how to execute it. That's not my world and I don't really think in those terms. It's really flying blind. That makes it less fun. Then it's not a creative thing that you're doing. At best, you're taking part in somebody else's creative thing, which I'm fine with, but at worst you're just trying to get something on film that looks like not totally embarrassing.
WWeek 2015