Happy 20th Anniversary to Aimee Mann’s third studio album Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo, originally released May 2, 2000.
Aimee Mann didn’t expect to write a fuck you anthem. Technically she was asked to. When Interscope Records told her there wasn’t a single on her record, she wrote “Nothing Is Good Enough” as in, “nothing is good enough for people like you.”
But it didn’t matter in the end.
Originally titled Underdog Day, Aimee Mann’s third record is called Bachelor No. 2 or, The Last Remains of the Dodo. She was brand new to Interscope but they didn’t know how to market a 30-year-old singer-songwriter with a power pop background. And so, after a long back and forth Mann got out of her contract, bought back the masters, and started her own label, Superego. For the last twenty years she has released her records on Superego. Don’t you just love that name? It’s a winking nod and sarcastic joke. The best kind of eyeroll.
In the end, the joke was on Interscope. Never doubt a woman who knows what she’s doing. Bachelor No. 2 would go on to sell 200,000 copies. The record turns 20 years old this week and this story is only its beginning.
Aimee Mann is a matter-of-fact artist. That’s exactly how she delivers her lines, elongating her voice to make a point stick. She states the facts. She told you so. Her charm and wit are just one half of her songwriting. The other half, I believe, is being smarter than everyone else in the room.
After dropping out of Boston’s Berklee College of Music and a short stint in punk, Mann played bass for 'Til Tuesday and wrote their hit single you most definitely know “Voices Carry.” It’s her high register that carries the song. A few years later came her first two solo records, Whatever (1993) and I’m With Stupid (1995), both released by Geffen. They solidified her confidence as a songwriter, even as she kept poking fun at the label’s shenanigans.
When Mann moved to L.A., she found the now-defunct music venue Largo in West Hollywood where multi-hyphenate Jon Brion hosted a weekly showcase. Largo provided a space for comedians and musicians looking to get their start, work out new material, and avoid the glossy demands of The Industry. Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith, Margaret Cho, and Sarah Silverman were all regulars. Mann was often the main attraction. It was where she developed a close friendship with director Paul Thomas Anderson.
When he heard the opening line of Mann’s “Deathly”—“Now that I’ve met you / would you object to / never seeing each other again”—Anderson started writing his new script backwards from there. The story follows a cast of characters all of whom are looking for something more than what they have: for a way out, or to hide from what they truly are, or to take it all back, and find forgiveness before it’s all over. And because it was her line that started it all, Mann was the only writer that could possibly give the soundtrack what it needed. Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia got a wide release. Its acclaim handed Mann an army of fans looking for something more than what major labels were delivering, all willing to buy Bachelor No. 2.
Magnolia’s soundtrack was a mainstay in my father’s car. The next year when Bachelor No. 2 came out, I remember the mint green cardboard cover and the delicate cursive writing. I had never heard a voice like Mann’s before and even though I was only 12, there was something about her I couldn’t stay away from. She knew something I didn’t.
There’s a moment in Magnolia when the cast breaks the fourth from their respective scenes and sing Mann’s “Wise Up.”
“It’s not what you thought / when you first began it / You got what you want / Now you can hardly stand it though / By now you know / It’s not going to stop….until you wise up.”
The lines are a perfect summation of the story behind Aimee Mann’s and Bachelor No. 2’s success, and the moral of Magnolia’s story: no one is going to do it for you.
It’s hard to explain the emotional weight “Wise Up” brings to the movie at its exact moment. Magnolia runs three hours long; Tom Cruise won a Golden Globe for his performance as a despicable male motivational speaker (which is equal parts riveting and repulsive); John C. Reilly plays a cop who falls for a woman on the other side of a domestic disturbance call; William H. Macy is a disgraced child star; and Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the hospice nurse caring for Julianne Moore’s dying husband, played by Jason Robards, who passed away one year after Magnolia’s December 1999 release.
Magnolia brings up every demon in your past and maybe reminds you of the ones you thought you let go. You fear for the characters and then you’re crying for them. Anderson himself said ''Simon and Garfunkel is to The Graduate as Aimee Mann is to Magnolia.”
Mann wrote “Red Vines” about Anderson (you can find all your Paul Thomas Anderson news and extras on the blog Cigarettes and Red Vines) and it was Bachelor’s first single, followed by “Calling It Quits” about getting paid and getting out.
Mann’s music is disenchanted and disappointed, for loners and people ready to prove you wrong. You know nothing about us. The songs of boredom (“Ghost World”), a life suspended in mistakes (“Driving Sideways”), and recognizing the self for who she really is (“The Fall Of The World’s Own Optimist”) are just the beginning of this collection of misanthropic melancholy. Aimee Mann is the music industry’s greatest outlier and they are her greatest foil.
Her distinct, singular tone moves in range like Joni Mitchell’s and Neil Young’s. Mann’s ability to jump registers is what makes her phrasings land like zingers whether or not they make you chuckle or wince. She’s rounded out by the ever-present piano. It’s not Mann behind the keys, those duties are shared between Benmont Tench, founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and composer, producer Patrick Warren. Largo’s fearless leader, Brion, produced Bachelor and plays drums on the LP. He uses brushes and delicacy to give it the feel of a jazz lounge on “It Takes All Kinds” and “Satellite.” It’s hard to decipher which instrument is the most forward. The scope of sound is luxurious. My favorite is the hi-hat and drums.
When I saw Mann ten years ago in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., the hi-hat was set up under her mic. She used it throughout the set like a third leg. On Bachelor No. 2 it adds clear cut extra timbres to every track. Her guitar hooks on “Susan” and slides all over “Red Vines” are a testament to Mann’s pop sensibility. She’s a sly cat.
Underdog Day would’ve been a title too on the nose for Aimee Mann. Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo is more her style: complicated with a mysterious undertone. Mann is the best anti-hero bard and a fearless singer-songwriter. Her records are like novels, fully fleshed out and painstakingly cared for. They might bum you out and that might be exactly what she was going for.
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