Aimee Mann Live, with Atul Gawande

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2022

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

Aimee Mann, the celebrated Los Angeles singer and songwriter, recently released an album called “Queens of the Summer Hotel.” It was inspired in part by Susanna Kaysen’s best-selling memoir “Girl, Interrupted,” about Kaysen’s time in a psychiatric hospital. Mann sat down with Atul Gawande at The New Yorker Festival to talk about the new album, the lessons of living through a pandemic, and how liberated she felt when she broke her ties with major record labels. “When you’re at a record label and you’re trying to ascertain whether something can be a hit or a single, you listen in a different way—and then everything sounds like garbage,” she said. Mann decided that she didn’t “want to keep baring my soul to people who hate everything I’m doing.”

This segment was originally aired November 26, 2021.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.4	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:13.5	If you're familiar with the musician Amy Mann, it may be because of this 1980s year-round.
0:19.4	Where you may remember her soundtrack for the film Magnolia back in 1999.
0:32.9	Amy Mann has been celebrated for her mastery of the craft of songwriting for a long time.
0:38.2	In a review in The New Yorker years ago, Nick Hornby said that Mann writes, quote,
0:42.9	proper lyrics instead of 10th-rate poetry.
0:46.6	Her most recent album is called Queens of the Summer Hotel, which was inspired by the
0:51.0	memoir Girl Interrupted.
0:53.4	Last fall, Amy Mann appeared at The New Yorker Festival and will start with her singing.
1:21.9	When the playing covers the draft, heaps to secrets and I'll sing you.
1:31.9	You think there's no other to hear your plea, that I can't see.
1:50.4	There's a girl over at the trend to break her fall, I see you.
2:00.4	How can she find one with a clean, into the wall?
2:07.4	I see you.
2:10.4	When I respect a spell, I just don't read.
2:21.4	I can't see.
2:28.4	Why does it get cross-stantangled?
2:43.4	And I believe.
3:03.4	There's a girl over at the time of empty as the sky, I see you.
3:15.4	I see you.
3:35.4	When I can't see, people get cross-stant broken.
	...

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