Misunderstood by their label, the group ended, then Mann spent the 90s with her first three solo albums of brilliantly spiky, weary, erudite guitar pop mired in major-label politics, from collapses and buyouts to brazen apathy at what to do with a late thirtysomething classicist more akin to Randy Newman than Britney Spears.īy the millennium, Mann had quit to start her own label, SuperEgo, where she has remained, releasing wryly tragic character studies of people doomed to self-sabotage. With her shocked peroxide do, rat-tail plait and unyielding stare, Mann resisted sexual and commercial commodification. In 1985, Mann’s band ’Til Tuesday had a US Top 10 hit with their debut single, Voices Carry, a sublime new-wave anthem about the liability of expressing emotion. When it comes to her career, the 61-year-old songwriter has never been one for the hard sell. “I’ve actually bought several things from Instagram ads,” she says sheepishly. She admits, with a whaddaya-gonna-do shrug, that she bought the Alexa Chung garm off Instagram. “So it’s been hard to get going.” Drab weather demands good knitwear, and Mann has paired thick-rimmed round glasses the size of ashtrays with a brown woollen sweater vest. “It has that six-in-the-morning feel,” says Aimee Mann, eternally droll, from a home office wallpapered in fruity foliage. I n Los Angeles, it’s early and overcast.
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