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

Hush hush, keep it down now, voices carry

Host: -or 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 most recent album is called Queens of the Summer Hotel, which was inspired by the memoir Girl, Interrupted. Last fall, Aimee Mann appeared at the New Yorker Festival. We'll start with her singing.

[music]

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

I see

And I believe

[applause]

Aimee Mann: Thank you so much.

Host: That was Aimee Mann performing I See You with Jonathan Coulton and Jason Hart. That's from her most recent album Queens of the Summer Hotel, which was inspired in part by Girl, Interrupted, the bestselling memoir by Susanna Kaysen. The title, The Summer Hotel, actually refers to the psychiatric hospital in Kaysen's book. At the New Yorker Festival last fall, 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 passionate music fan.

[applause]

Atul Gawande: You sent me the album and I really appreciate that. I got to listen to it on a 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 Mann: [laughs] Oh God.

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

Aimee Mann: Kind of coerced into--

Atul Gawande: Yes, to be admitted to McLean's Psychiatric Hospital, where she'd spend almost the next two years.

Aimee Mann: Which is a long time.

Atul Gawande: [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 in and out, right?

Aimee Mann: Yes. I made it a funny song [chuckles] but it isn't.

Atul Gawande: He's never the top psychiatrist by the time you're done. You might say a couple of the lyrics about electroshock, for example.

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

[applause]

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

[music]

Give me fifteen, give me fifteen, give me fifteen minutes

That is all I need to make the call

Give me fifteen, give me fifteen, give me fifteen minutes

Women are so simple after all

Aimee Mann: Something like that

In the time it takes to walk around the block

I can have you scheduled for electroshock

Aimee Mann: Something like that. Anyway.

[applause]

I didn't really take it that seriously.

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

Aimee Mann: 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, right?

Atul Gawande: Yes. 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."

Aimee Mann: Wow. Low bar.

[laughter]

Atul Gawande: Low bar. What would it be for you? What's the minimum quality of life you'd find acceptable?

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

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

Aimee Mann: Dude, I think if the pandemic has taught me anything, it's that people need to be around other human beings and some 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 Gawande: The next song that you're going to do is Goose Snow Cone.

Aimee Mann: Yes.

Atul Gawande: This one struck me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding it as being out of keeping with your dark tendencies, is based on a cute Instagram photo that friends posted of a snowy white cat.

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

Atul Gawande: Oh, good.

Aimee Mann: [chuckles] Don't worry. My friends had this cat named Goose. I was on tour in Dublin. It was very cold and snowy. I saw this picture of the cat in her little cone, the cone of shame. She looked like a little snow cone because her face was like around 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. It just didn't happen.

Atul Gawande: Goose Snow Cone and Aimee Mann.

[music]

Lookin' 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 your 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 your friends come by

Always checking the weather but they wanna know why

Even birds of a feather find it hard to fly

Lookin' 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 your friends come by

Always checking the weather but they wanna know why

Even birds of a feather find it hard to fly

Lookin' into the face of the goose snow cone

[applause]

Aimee Mann: Thank you so much.

[applause]

Atul Gawande: There are very few new waivers who have an ongoing musical career. Duran Duran, no. Spandau Ballet, no.

Aimee Mann: I bet Duran Duran could fill some theatres.

Atul Gawande: You can fill, but not creating new music that people, not just still are drawn to, but building new audiences and reaching people in new ways the way you have been. I would love to ask you about, you got there and it was a dark journey through record company travels. Can you tell us a little bit about what you went through before you came out the other side?

Aimee Mann: 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. 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. Here are our dumb ideas for how to do that." That really is about the size of it. That was a situation I really chased 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--

Atul Gawande: In years you recorded Bachelor No. 2, the album that would be a breakout for you?

Aimee Mann: Bachelor No. 2, I had recorded and it was finished. That was a complicated situation. I was on Gethin, and Gethin 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. 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. You could have kind of a mail order situation. 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 this situation."

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

Aimee Mann: 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 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 ink plot. It's a Rorschach test. You see things in it and then the things suggest a story, and so you start writing the story. It's just very interesting to me.

Atul Gawande: Aimee, this has been just fantastic.

Aimee Mann: Thank you so much.

[applause]

Atul Gawande: 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 with the song Save Me, which appeared on the soundtrack for the movie Magnolia. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. See you next time.

[music]

You look like

A perfect fit

For a girl in need

Of a tourniquet

But can you 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

That 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?

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

That 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

Aimee Mann: Thank you

[applause]

 

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