Aimee Mann

Aimee Elizabeth Mann (born September 8, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter.

Over the course of four decades, she has released more than a dozen albums as a solo artist and with other musicians.

She is noted for her sardonic and literate lyrics about dark subjects.

Mann was born at the Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, on September 8, 1960.

When she was three, her mother had an affair and became pregnant and her parents divorced.

Mann was kidnapped by her mother and her new boyfriend and taken to Europe, where they traveled.

Mann's father, a marketing executive, hired a private detective, who brought her back from England a year later to a new stepmother and two stepbrothers.

Mann said her father seemed "like a stranger" when they were reunited.

The kidnapping gave Mann post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety around travelling later in life.

She did not see her mother again until she was 14.

She forgave her decades later, saying she had been "trapped on every side".

Mann grew up in Bon Air, Virginia, and attended Midlothian High School in Chesterfield County.

She was withdrawn and would not talk, and her father and stepmother sent her to a psychiatrist.

Her drama teacher recalled her as "kind of an insecure kid, very quiet, very introspective … When she did start talking, she was worth listening to."

Mann learned to play her brother's guitar when she was confined to bed with glandular fever at the age of 12.

As a teenager, she enjoyed David Bowie and Iggy Pop and was inspired by punk and new wave music.

She said: "[It] was so interesting, so inventive – literally do whatever you want. That Patti Smith was out there and people were accepting her? Oh my God, there's a way out."

In 1978, feeling she did not fit in the "normal world", Mann enrolled in Berklee College of Music in Boston to study bass guitar.

She had wanted to learn the bass as a child, but her family ridiculed her, saying it was unladylike.

After 18 months, she dropped out and joined the Boston punk band the Young Snakes on bass.

She was unhappy in the band, saying the other members objected to her writing love songs or music they considered too melodic.

She joined the band Ministry, which she said helped her learn to write songs efficiently.

In the 1980s, after playing with the Young Snakes and Ministry, she co-founded the new wave band 'Til Tuesday and wrote their top-ten single "Voices Carry" (1985).

In the early 1980s, she worked at Newbury Comics in Massachusetts.

At Berklee, Mann and Michael Hausman formed a new wave band, 'Til Tuesday, with Mann providing bass and vocals.

They signed to Epic Records and released Voices Carry, their debut album, in 1985.

Mann's work with the producer Jon Brion in the 1990s was influential on American alternative rock.

Mann was born in Richmond, Virginia, and studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

'Til Tuesday released three albums and disbanded in 1990 when Mann left to pursue a solo career.

Mann released her first solo album, Whatever, in 1993, followed by I'm With Stupid in 1995.

Both earned positive reviews but low sales, and placed Mann in conflict with her record company, Geffen.

She achieved wider recognition for her contributions to the soundtrack for the Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia (1999).

Her song "Save Me" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal.

After Geffen refused to release her third album, Bachelor No. 2, Mann released it under her own label, SuperEgo Records, in 2000.

It achieved acclaim and strong sales, establishing Mann as a career artist who could work outside the major label system.

Mann has released seven solo albums since.

In 2006, she was named one of the greatest living songwriters by NPR and Paste.

In 2014, she released an album with Ted Leo as the Both.

Mann also paints and makes comics, and has appeared in film and television series including The Big Lebowski, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Steven Universe, The West Wing and Portlandia.

Her awards include two Grammy Awards, including Best Folk Album for Mental Illness (2017).