20 June 2018

20 June 2018 - Aimee Mann - Save Me

Few movie songs come with a better story than this one.

This song, along with the rest of the mostly-Aimee-Mann performed soundtrack, is from the P.T. Anderson movie Magnolia. I recommend this odd but delightful movie, just for the frog scene.  Trust me.  Right before she was approached by Anderson to do this movie, Mann had been dropped from her record label, and didn't have an easy future ahead of her in the music industry - and this is despite the huge "Voices Carry" in her past.

This song ended up being nominated for an Oscar (losing, somehow, to perhaps the worst ever Oscar-winning song, "You'll Be In My Heart" by Phil Collins, to whom she now dedicates this song when performing it live) and a Grammy (which she lost to a deserving Macy Gray).  She went on to found her own music imprint and remains a successful artist to this day.

The video - featuring Mann inserted into scenes from the movie - is even more interesting.  Perhaps the most star-studded music video of all time, this effect didn't happen by digital manipulation.  That's really Tom Cruise sitting in the same scene with Aimee Mann.  P.T. Anderson directed the video and asked the actors to stay in place at the end of shooting days while they shot this.

The song itself is a work of art.  Nearly two decades old, it sounds like it could have been written yesterday.

 

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