Host: If you're familiar with the musician Aimee Mann, it may be because of this 1980s earworm.

[playing Voices Carry by' Til Tuesday]

Host: Well, you may remember her soundtrack for the film Magnolia back in 1999. Aimee Mann has been celebrated for her mastery of the craft of songwriting for a long time. In a review in The New Yorker years ago, Nick Hornby said that Mann writes, "Proper lyrics instead of 10th-rate poetry." Her new album is called Queens of the Summer Hotel, which was inspired by the memoir Girl, Interrupted. Last month. Aimee Mann appeared at The New Yorker festival. Let's start with a song.

[Playing I See You by Aimee Mann]

There is a girl up in her bed

Blade against her skin

I see you

Hoping the pain covers the dread

Keeps the secrets in

I see you

You think there’s no one there

To hear your plea

But I can see

There is a girl over a cliff

Trying to break her fall

I see you

Hoping she’ll find one little if

Clinging to the wall

I see you

Whether it’s black despair

Or just ennui

I can see

Wires get crossed and tangled

People bruise and they leave

But I see

And I believe

There is a girl out with the tide

Empty as the sky

I see you

Dead to the world, frozen inside

Drier than an eye

I see you

You want to disappear

And just not be

But I can see

People get crushed and broken

People lose and they grieve

But I see

And I believe

[applause]

Aimee Mann: Thank you so much.

[applause]

Host: That was Aimee Mann performing I See You with Jonathan Coulton and Jason Hart. It's from our new album Queens of The Summer Hotel, which was inspired in part by Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen's best-selling memoir. The title of the Summer Hotel actually refers to the psychiatric hospital in Kaysen's book. At The New Yorker festival, Mann spoke with staff writer Atul Gawande, whom you might know better as an expert on public health on COVID and much more, but Atul is also a really passionate music fan.

[applause]

Atul Gawande: You sent me the album and I really appreciate that. I got to listen to it on the day I'd come out of my surgery clinic. For those who don't know, I'm up in Boston and I work as a surgeon and in public health. One song called 15 minutes got to me.

Aimee: [laughs] God.

Atul: Susanna Kaysen who wrote the memoir Girl, Interrupted, it opens with her going in to see a psychiatrist she's never seen before. 15 minutes later, she is, more or less, involuntarily admitted to-

Aimee: Of course, Jack coerced her to-

Atul: -to be admitted into McLean psychiatric hospital where she'd spend almost the next two years.

Aimee: Which is a long time.

Atul: [chuckles] It's a long time. 15 minutes was about the 15-minute appointment, which my day is made up of 15-minute appointments. It is gruesome to think about how we move people [unintelligible 00:05:58], right?

Aimee: I made it a funny song, but it isn't.

Atul: He's an over-the-top psychiatrist by the time you're done. You might say, a couple of the lyrics are about electroshock, for example.

Aimee: Yes. Let me see if I can remember it. Hold on a second.

Atul: Let's see it. Let's do it.

Aimee: [playing Give me Fifteen]

Give me 15, give me 15, give me 15 minutes

That is all I need to make the call

With only15, only 15, only 15 minutes

Women are so simple after all

In the time it takes to walk around the block

I can have you scheduled for electroshock.

Something like that. Anyway-

[applause]

Aimee Mann: -I didn't really take it that seriously.

Atul: It is. The memoir is actually hysterical. You managed to bring out-- I understand your attraction to it. It's dark and it's funny at the same time.

Aimee: I think that that's how you have to be. If you find yourself in a mental institution and you're surrounded by other mental patients, you have to have some humor about it.

Atul: I re-read the memoir for this show. The thing that struck me was it is funny, and at the same time, this dark sense that here are these people who've lost the thread of-- Almost all of them have attempted to commit suicide at one point or another in the book. They've lost the thread of what makes life worth living. In my own work, whether it's cancer patients or others, the question that I often like to ask people are questions about what they find makes life worth living so that we make sure we preserve that along the way.

It's one of my favorite questions to ask, as it's turned out. One person I got to write about had said that, "Look, if I can eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on television, that will be good enough for me." As long as you-

Aimee: Wow, low bar.

Atul: [unintelligible 00:08:26]-- Low bar. What would it be for you? What's the minimum quality of life you'd find acceptable?

Aimee: Being around my friends. I think that's the most important thing, and making music. Yes, making music.

Atul: I was going to say, you didn't immediately say music. If you couldn't make music, that would really-

Aimee: Dude, I think if the pandemic has taught me anything, it's that people need to be around other human beings, more than one. Sorry, my spouse, but more than just one. I need a little group of friends, which is what a band is. That's why I like to play live and I love playing with other musicians. It's a shared thing. It's like three brains forming to make this other thing.

Atul: The next song that you're [unintelligible 00:09:21] is Goose Snow Cone. This one struck me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding it, as being out of keeping with your dark tendencies. It was based on a cute Instagram photo that friends posted of a snowy white cat.

Aimee: It was inspired by the cat and then immediately took a left turn into being very depressing.

Atul: Oh, good.

Aimee: Yes. Don't worry. My friends had this cat named Goose. I was on tour in Dublin, it was very cold and snowy, and I saw this picture of the cat in her little cone, the cone of shame, and she looked like a little snow cone because her face was like a round white fluffy ball. I started writing this song thinking that I would change the phrase goose snow cone to something else later and then it's called Goose Snow Cone, so it just didn't happen.

Atul: Goose Snow Cone and Aimee Mann.

Aimee Mann: [playing Goose Snow Cone]

Looking into the face of the goose snow cone

Should be shaking it loose but you do it alone

Every look is a truce and it's written in stone

Gotta keep it together when the friends come by

Always checking the weather but they wanna know why

Even birds of a feather find it hard to fly

Thought I saw at my feet an origami crow

It was only the street hidden under the snow

Always snatching defeat, it's the devil I know

Gotta keep it together when the friends come by

Always checking the weather but they wanna know why

Even birds of a feather find it hard to fly

Looking into the face of the goose snow cone

I could pick up the pace but I couldn't go on

I just wanted a place but I ended up gone

Gotta keep it together when the friends come by

Always checking the weather but they wanna know why

Even birds of a feather find it hard to fly

Looking into the face of the goose snow cone

[applause]

Aimee: Thank you so much.

[applause]

Atul: There are very few new waivers who have an ongoing musical career, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet? No

Aimee: I bet Duran Duran could fill some theaters.

Atul: He can fill, but not creating new music that people still are drawn-- not just still are drawn to you, building new audiences and reaching people in new ways, the way you have been.

Aimee: Well, [unintelligible 00:14:35]

Atul: I would love to ask you about, you got there and it was a dark journey through record company [unintelligible 00:14:44]. Can you tell us a little bit about what you went through before you came out the other side?

Aimee: Being on a major label at the point where I was in the '80s and early '90s, I think, the music industry is one of those industries where people feel like there's easy money, and if they can just figure out what the formula for having a hit song is, then they will make that easy money. Then they go to the artist and they say, "We need you to sound exactly like this thing that is already on the radio and hear our dumb ideas for how to do that." That really is about the size of it. That was a situation I really chafed at because I felt like if you don't like the music I'm doing, then just release me from my contract. It was just a lot of waiting that out. I was on-

Arthur: In years, you'd record Bachelor No. 2 and the album that would be a breakout for you.

Aimee: Yes. Bachelor No. 2 I had recorded and it was finished. There was a complicated situation. I was on Geffen and Geffen and a bunch of other labels merged into Interscope. Interscope was getting a huge influx of other artists, and they actually told me I could leave if I wanted to and I was like, "Thank you, Jesus. Finally, I can get out of this." At that point, the Internet wasn't really a thing, but enough of a thing so you could have a mail order situation, and I was like, "I don't care if I have to sell this out of the back of a van, I just have to get out of the situation."

Atul: Now who do you write for? I remember seeing a talk from several writers and where they'd answer the question, "Why do you write?" One did say, "I write to eliminate relationships because it's the relationships between people I don't want to understand." The other person said, "I write because I want to stick it to the man." Why do you write?

Aimee: [laughs] For different reasons. Relationships between people is very interesting. Finding or going through or observing a complicated situation and boiling it down to its essence in three and a half minutes is very interesting. It's like a little magic trick or a puzzle. I like getting inside other people's heads and writing from their perspective to see what it's like and then see where I intersect with that person. There's different reasons.

There's something that's magical that happens when you have a complicated problem or feeling, when you put that into words. That's really interesting. It's like an inkblot, it's a Rorschach test. You see things in it and then the things suggest a story, and so you start writing a story and it's just very interesting to me.

Atul: Aimee, this has been just fantastic.

Aimee: Thank you so much.

[applause]

Atul: One last time, please, give it up for Aimee Mann.

[applause]

Host: That's staff writer, Atul Gawande speaking with Aimee Mann. We'll close now with Save Me, which appeared on the soundtrack to the film Magnolia. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. See you next time.

[playing Save Me by Aimee Mann]

You look like a perfect fit,

For a girl in need of a tourniquet.

But can you save me?

Come on and save me

Why don't you save me?

If you could save me,

From the ranks of the freaks,

Who suspect they could never love anyone.

'Cause I can tell you know what it's like.

A long farewell of the hunger strike. But can you save me?

Come on and save me

If you could save me,

From the ranks of the freaks,

Who suspect they could never love anyone.

You struck me dumb, like radium

Like Peter Pan, or Superman,

You have come to save me.

Why don't you save me?

Come on and save me

If you could save me,

From the ranks of the freaks,

Who suspect they could never love anyone,

Except the freaks,

Who suspect they could never love anyone,

But the freaks,

Who suspect they could never love anyone.

Come on and save me

Why don't you save me?

If you could save me,

From the ranks of the freaks,

Who suspect they could never love anyone,

Except the freaks,

Who suspect they could never love anyone,

Except the freaks,

Who could never love anyone.

[applause]

Aimee: Thank you.

 

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