About 25 years ago, Aimee Mann proved that making the music that you want to make is the surest way to create great records. And that doing things based on a committee’s consensus will trip you up. You would think those are self-evident concepts.
Videos by American Songwriter
But Mann had to leave the major label system to release her 2000 masterpiece Bachelor No. 2 Or, The Last Remains Of The Dodo. For the project, she backed up her talent in writing and performing the songs with her courage in sticking to her guns.
Mann Goes It Alone
Heading into the end of the 90s, Aimee Mann’s career seemed to be on the upswing. After fronting the 80s buzz band ‘Til Tuesday, she moved on to a solo career. She released two critically acclaimed albums. And then her record company got swallowed up in a corporate merger.
Mann had recently written a fresh batch of promising songs. Some of these ended up on the soundtrack to the 1999 film Magnolia. The rest were earmarked for her next solo record. While Jon Brion helped Mann out in the beginning of this process, she largely ended up producing the album on her own.
But when she brought the album into her new label, they came away unimpressed. Their main complaint was that they felt it lacked a hit single that could break Mann to a wider audience. They made suggestions on how she could improve it, which she resisted. When they told her they wouldn’t release the record as it was, Mann decided to leave the label.
In the meantime, the exposure she received from her songs being in Magnolia (in many ways, the entire film is based around them) brought attention to Mann’s record-label problems. She decided to form her own label, originally releasing Bachelor No. 2 from her website.
Finally, she struck a wider distribution deal. For the most part, critics and Mann’s fans heard in Bachelor No. 2 a stunningly accomplished singer-songwriter album. And they wondered how anyone, especially those whose jobs it was to determine such things, could have ever thought otherwise.
Revisiting the Music of ‘Bachelor No. 2’
Throughout Bachelor No. 2, Mann pulls off an amazing balancing act. Songs like “Nothing Is Good Enough” and “It Takes All Kinds” clearly could have emanated from her frustrations with music executives. But she structured them in such a way that they’re likely to strike a chord with anyone who has known the disappointment of being let down by someone important to them.
In fact, disappointment and how characters react to it is a theme that runs through the album. The teenage heroine of “Ghost World” wants to leave her small-minded town behind, even if she might lack the capability of doing it. The narrator of “Susan” has declared her independence, and she wants the titular character to do the same.
Even without focusing on the meaning of the songs, you can get lost in the wordplay. “The Fall Of The World’s Own Optimist”, written with Elvis Costello, plays a game of one-upmanship with itself, each line more limber and erudite than what came before. But even when Mann keeps it simple, as on “Just Like Anyone”, a short, somber elegy, her melodic ease proves captivating.
A few years back, Aimee Mann released a version of the album that included the songs from Magnolia as well. It’s further indication of how high she was soaring during that time. No matter what version you hear, however, Bachelor No. 2 will wow you with its technique, touch you with its heart, and bewilder you when you think that music pros missed all that greatness in the first place.
Photo by Sheryl Nields / Sacks & Co.
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.