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It was a real magic moment to connect with Aimee Mann, a musician I’ve listened to for decades. She indulges my curiosities about lyric choices and instrumental training, and I learn how much goes on behind the scenes of an Aimee Mann production. We talk about the traumas of her past, which hardships do and do not influence her work, and why there feels like a creative imperative to turn pain into art. Then, to lighten things up (at least a little) we bond over some of our favorite artists of years past, like the sneakily somber Steely Dan.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Aimee Mann, David Duchovny

David Duchovny  00:05

Hi, I’m David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Aimee Mann is one of the great songwriters of our time, or any time. She’s released 10 studio albums as a solo artist over the course of four decades. Her music is melodic, thoughtful, clever, and yet it explores dark themes like depression and anxiety. We get into the many challenges she’s battled through, continues to battle through, including dealing with physical health problems and anxiety, depression, PTSD and traumatic events from her childhood. I appreciate Amy being so forthcoming and vulnerable and sharing what it’s like to keep moving forward and stay creative and stay awake and conscious and to heal and to try to heal, and, of course, to keep creating through successes and through failures. Here’s our conversation.

 

David Duchovny  01:05

Aimee, thanks so much for doing this.

 

Aimee Mann  01:08

My pleasure.

 

David Duchovny  01:09

I gotta say I’m truly an admirer of yours. Have been for many, many years and and I just think you’re, you’re such an amazing songwriter and such an amazing poet, and it’s really, it’s a lot. It’s a lot. I mean, I’ve been driving around with your songs all week, and I find that my hands grip the wheel really tight during Vladimir song, and I’m not even aware of it. You know, there’s like, such tension.

 

Aimee Mann  01:38

It feels like that I’m causing anxiety where it’s like your, your subconscious is anxious. My topics are making you anxious.

 

David Duchovny  01:47

It’s barely subconscious. It’s like it’s conscious, adjacent. I don’t know what to call it, but you bring up your songs, they chart movement. I mean, I really like songs that do that, even if it’s just you make a slight vocal change in a word, in the third chorus, or whatever, sometime. But there’s always your songs are like plays to me. There are acts in them, and they go from a thesis to an antithesis to a synthesis, in many ways to me. And that’s kind of the tension that I’m feeling throughout the song is like, how is this going to resolve?

 

Aimee Mann  02:27

Oh, interesting. I mean, I That’s the intention. I mean, you know, like to writing a song to me, there is a progression of, you know, stating what’s going on in the first verse, and, like, how does that get summed up in the chorus and then continuing the idea, or taking a left turn in the second verse? Like, I do feel, I do try to have movement through the song and have it wind up in a different in a different place, like, it’s kind of an arc. It’s not necessarily a real narrative arc, but, but it’s supposed to, it is supposed to, you know, go in different places.

 

David Duchovny  03:04

Yeah, well, I want, I guess, you know, you mentioned the word consciousness. I think it’s like an arc of consciousness in a way, if it’s not, like, it’s not a resolution, it’s not a musical resolution, but there’s been a movement, and that, that, to me, is, is what it doesn’t, it doesn’t end at that point. That’s what I think I’m gripping the wheel, because it’s just, it’s continuing on in a new form. It’s not like that’s the end of the story. The end of the song is not the end well.

 

Aimee Mann  03:29

Thank you very much. That’s really, it’s nice to hear because that is kind of exactly what I’m trying to do.

 

David Duchovny  03:35

Well, good job. Mission accomplished. But the where, and again, where I want to start. There’s so many places that I’d like to talk to you about, but you’ve commented that, you know, growing up as a woman in the 60s and 70s, would would give anybody PTSD or drive anybody crazy? And I’m just very interested. So I’m just wondering of the feelings back then as you were making your own way, because, obviously, you found your own way. But it was not, it was not immediate. You know, it was very much a lifelong journey for you. And the the amount of kind of anxiety and pain that must have entailed is intense to me, intense to think about. And I’m wondering how it appeared to you, talking about unconscious, pre, conscious, conscious, adjacent, whatever you know, you’re 16-17, years old.  What am I going to do with my life? I’m being told I can’t do these things, or I can’t do these things take me through a little bit of the growth and and the limitations that were enforced upon you or that you felt, you know, the false limitations that you felt at that point?

 

Aimee Mann  04:46

Well, I you know, I think that at the time I grew up. I was born in 1960 and I had three brothers, and all of my interests were quite. Climbing rocks, climbing trees. I loved football. I loved sports. I loved, you know, I was into Batman and Superman. I I wanted to, like, go scuba diving someday, or learn how to ski, like, all of those things sounded really fun, and it was just like a progression of, no, you can’t do that. Why? Because you’re a girl? Why? Because girls don’t do that. But why do like, you know, like? So it was this circular logic. You can’t do that. You’re a girl. Girls don’t want to do that, so that’s why you can’t do it. And and that just, you know, I never internally bought it, but at the same time, when you are told that over and over, even just dumb stuff, like wanting to get a pair of, like, Converse All Stars, which were just like, arguably cool, I’m actually.

 

David Duchovny  05:52

That’s your birthright.

 

Aimee Mann  05:53

And you’re like, no girls can’t wear, like, wear a fucking tennis shoe. So, like, I knew that it was maddening, but also it was what, like you literally didn’t get the shoe, like you didn’t get to do the thing. And one of the things that I wanted to do was play bass, and because I had gotten this book about, you know, how to be in a band, and I was like, Ooh, I’d be in a music and electric guitars and, and I saw the bass, and there was just something, I was like, Ooh, like these four lower string, you know, like, there was just something about it that was very intriguing. And, and I said, stupidly in front of my family that I wanted to learn how to play the bass. And they literally laughed at me, like, girls don’t play the bass and hahaha. And so, like, on some level, you can think, well, that sort of doesn’t make sense, but you’re also like, do they know, like, some secret about women that makes it un like, it seemed ridiculous, but also that was, like the accepted truth that was, like, the truth of the land, that women just could not play guitar or bass, and that was the end of it. So then you’re like, completely in imposter syndrome. And I had a bass teacher who was just like, Okay, what do you want to learn? Here’s how to, you know, when you get a chord chart, here’s how to do, you know, do, do do, you know, like, walk through the, check the changes, and I wanted to learn how to read music. So we played Bach, cello duets, and the, you know, bass clef and, and, you know, he was just like, what do you want? He didn’t, I didn’t get any of that. Like, well, as a woman, you get, you know, it’s like, you’re another bass player and, and honestly, like, My instinct is right, like, I, I am a good bass player, and I have really good time. Like, it is, like, I love playing bass. I’m good at it. It’s, you know, I don’t really do it live, because I usually play a cozy guitar, and I have such a great bass player in my band. But, like, my instinct about that was dead on and but it is like you have to overcome this internal thing of, if I make a mistake, or people sitting there going, Oh, it’s because she’s a girl, which is fucking devastating. Like, you don’t even get to be a human making a mistake. It has to be because you’re a girl. That’s, you know, every mistake is a girl mistake.

 

David Duchovny  08:23

That’s just awful.

 

Aimee Mann  08:25

Yeah, oh, to live in the in the time of, like, you can be anything you want. I’m like, Oh, my God, nobody ever said that to me.

 

David Duchovny  08:34

You went to college for a few months, right?

 

Aimee Mann  08:37

Yeah. I went to a place called Berklee College of Music in, and that was, at the time, a jazz school, and I didn’t know anything about music at all, let alone jazz. But the thing I really liked about Berklee is you could just go there. You didn’t have to audition, and just learn at your own pace. So if you worked really hard, you could, you could learn more. I mean, it was kind of like a trade school in a way. And honestly, like, that’s probably, I had this vague idea that maybe if I learned about music, it would show me if I had any talents or not, because I, you know, I could play a couple of songs on because the guitar, a couple of Neil Young songs or something. But, yeah, but I realized at Berkeley, you know, I for me, if I learning about sort of simple, basic music theory structure, was very helpful. And that practicing, you know, ear training that, you know, you could sort of practice and go, oh, I can hear that that chord is a five chord, and then is going, you know, it’s very rudimentary, like, I still I can’t, like, really transcribe, like my friends could do it. But I was just, like, a revelation to realize that with music, as with other things, you can practice it and get better.

 

David Duchovny  09:53

Do you write with the bass? Because I was interested when I started to make little music. But you know, when you sing, you often, you. You often want to hear the bass more than you want to hear the guitar chords, you know. And so I think melodically, I think it makes sense that you would have been kind of moving towards bass, aside from rhythmically.

 

Aimee Mann  10:12

In my first band, which was called till Tuesday, we kind of started out as, like, you know, doing sort of a dance funk thing, you know, like, I was very influenced by chic, you know, you know, like the figure of poppy and stuff. So I would write on bass in that band. And then, you know, and then later, I think that, you know, the things, the stuff I listened to when I was a kid, like, you know, Dylan and Neil Young, I think that that really kind of stuck further in. So then I started writing on a cozy guitar, and sometimes I write on piano now, just to get myself out of the patterns that I you know invariably go to on guitar.

 

David Duchovny  10:53

Right, do you think you had any literary, lyrical influences when you were starting out? Or have you, have you been, always been a reader, as has that been an influencer or poetry reader of any kind.

 

Aimee Mann  11:05

I have always been a reader, not necessarily poetry, but just, you know, my Fitzgerald is my favorite, because there’s just like a relationship with language and metaphor that is so interesting and I can read things over and over, just to, like, sit in the language. And I have that with Raymond Chandler too. It’s that I’m rereading Raymond Chandler just like, in fact, I just wrote a song that was inspired by a line in Farewell my lovely where he, I mean, it’s just like a simple line, but I was so in awe of this. He he gets picked up in a car, and they’re driving out to Santa Monica and and he says they turned all the lights green for him. And I was like, oh, that’s such a great image. And so I use sort of a variation that of that to start, to start a song, because I love the idea of imbuing inanimate objects with meaning, because you can sort of offset it’s a way to talk about your feelings without saying this is how I feel. So you know, the line is like, driving down all the lights were green, you know? So it’s the lights that are optimistic, right? It’s the lights that are everything’s going right, and it’s embodied in the in this inanimate object. And I love that, because it also is what people do, you know, seeing their mood reflected or projecting their mood on the outside world.

 

David Duchovny  12:46

Well, it’s interesting that you come up with the green light, because that’s, of course, the famous Fitzgerald Daisy’s green light as well.

 

Aimee Mann  12:55

I don’t know. He configures his sentences in a way where you’re like, how is he getting away with that, like, I feel like anybody else doing that, it just, it wouldn’t work.

 

David Duchovny  13:06

I could say the same thing about your use of language in your songs. I mean to, like, deathly. I mean, like, that’s who’s who’s gonna use that word and  I can hear you in that song. You know, when you turn it into definitely, I can just, I almost hear like, I feel like that was a late edition. Yeah, my god, she heard that, and then she, which is, that’s just very exciting to me as a listener, to hear you thinking through a song as well. You know, obviously it’s written when you’re recording it. But I feel like, I feel like often, and I don’t have, I didn’t like, pull everything up to to quiz you on it, but I feel like you are alive to yourself, you know? And that’s something that that reads in the songs, and that I fail in the songs, that you’re forgettable. You know, what I said in the beginning, is like you kind of change or the songs change, but I think you’re alive to changing yourself with your inspiration, you know? And I feel like, I feel like that’s what makes you a great songwriter and a great consciousness in songwriting. Because when I was in school, like they said, Oh, Shakespeare is the first playwright to show characters change in real time. Whereas before that, you know, you had characters named vice lust, yeah, you know, they were, they were, you were like a one trick pony, like as a character in a play, and Shakespeare, using the soliloquy, actually showed characters thinking, yeah, and changing themselves. That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s like, I can see that in you, that you change yourself, you change the way you’re thinking about something over the course of the song, and I don’t have an example.

 

Aimee Mann  14:51

I mean, I agree with you. And just like, even a step further, the very process of writing a song is it is a transfer. Want to experience, because it’s like, there, there’s something that is exciting. And I don’t, you know, like, I you can you start in a certain mood and you’re like, Okay, what is this mood? What chords kind of sound like this mood? What story can I tell that fits these chords, and what melody fits these chords, and what melody fits the story, so that the story also sounds like, you know, the mood, and then you’re telling the story, and then you’re inside it, and at the end of it, you don’t feel that way anymore, you know, you’ve I mean, not that the song has to have sort of a happy ending, but the happy ending is that is exactly how I felt. That is the exact feeling I have succeeded in documenting this complicated feeling, you know, with somebody I’m angry at, and yet I feel a lot of love for, you know, like, whatever the complicated feeling is, this has documented it. And I mean, there is even, like, kind of a fun like, it leaves you with, like, a positive hangover, like a fun hangover, even when you’re like, when it’s written a little out of spite of like, I have nailed my description of what an asshole you are.

 

David Duchovny  16:31

Well, yeah, I mean, you’re.

 

Aimee Mann  16:33

I mean, spite is an underrated motivator for.

 

David Duchovny  16:38

I think for you it has, it has served you really well, you know, and, and I’m in, like, in whatever that was, that was an album that I that I played over and over again, and I should have known, yeah, in which correct me if I’m wrong. But I do believe that the background vocals are saying, dot.

 

Aimee Mann  16:59

Yeah.

 

David Duchovny  17:00

How literary. How literary is that? So you’re actually.

 

Aimee Mann  17:05

It’s even dumber than that, because.

 

David Duchovny  17:09

I was like, I was listening to the other day. I was like, is that? I think it’s dot. She’s saying there.

 

Aimee Mann  17:12

So me and the producer, John Bryan, used to listen to, I don’t know. Do you  know who Alan Sherman is. He was like a parody song, right?

 

David Duchovny  17:23

Hello, mother, Hello, father. Here. I’m from Canada that’s.

 

Aimee Mann  17:26

Yeah, and so he on one of his records, is a song that is Night, night and day by Cole Porter with punctuation. And so he was like, night and day, comma, dot and dot was one of the things he did. And we were like, We love that. So that’s, we put that in.

 

David Duchovny  17:46

Ah, I love that song. There’s a couple of spiteful songs on that album, I think that are, well, I mean, Dylan was also a good, spiteful.

 

Aimee Mann  17:55

Oh, my God. He was the best fight writer, because he’s so cutting. I think like mine, you know, a lot of mine are more like my feelings are hurt, but I don’t know, like sometimes, if it’s real, end of the spite. You’re just making yourself laugh so like you don’t feel any spite anymore.

 

David Duchovny  18:42

I wanted to read you a quote from the research that my folks gave me. I just think it’s a great quote is, I hope it makes you laugh. It’s terrible thing Following the success of Magnolia and bachelor number two, she had a mental breakdown and depression Following the success of Magnolia. But, I mean, that’s, I just want to talk about success and failure.

 

Aimee Mann  19:07

I’m not really sure where that quote came from. I mean, I would say following, or maybe before, during and after.

 

David Duchovny  19:16

Like, I don’t know either, but it just I laughed when I read that, because it was like, Well, what would be the in a way, it would always, it’s kind of my reaction to success as well, is like, oh, I’ve got to, like, shut everything down. That’s the worst thing that could happen, right there is that something worked out.

 

Aimee Mann  19:37

I don’t think I have that. I mean, I think it’s, I will say, like, when I’ve been I don’t know depression is not really the right when I’ve been the most anxious, or, you know, break, breaky, downy just has been been, because success usually has meant. Uh, working fucking non stop. And I in, like, in a way that is, you know, like, if you were, I just, I don’t really, I don’t have as much bandwidth as some people might, but like to be on the road constantly and never getting, you know, reasonable sleep or decent food, or, you know, having any kind of stability or rest or time off like that is that’s more of a contributing factor to, you know, feeling, I mean, you know, just like I’m more susceptible to physical, you know, feeling physically broken down is going to lead to kind of, like, a very bad mental state. And some, you know, and it’s like, it’s often you don’t see it coming, because you feel like I shouldn’t be able to do this. Don’t other people do this? Haven’t I heard about other people going non stop, and Taylor Swift does to touring constantly. You’re like, Taylor Swift probably has like 1000 busses and chefs and friends and entourage like, you know, you don’t have that. Yeah, so it’s a different experience was.

 

David Duchovny  21:13

But there was a time that you kind of checked out for a little bit. There was a time in my life where I checked out for for a while, and went to a rehab type situation. And it was, it was when things were just so things had been that busy for that long, yeah, and I hadn’t, I guess I hadn’t. I hadn’t figured myself out enough at that point. And I went to Sierra, Tucson, actually, and I learned a lot there, you know, I learned a lot in terms of, like, the education of of interpersonal relations, you know, like how, and I remember being there and thinking, you know, I wish that they had a course in this in college, you know, and how to, how to, rather than, you know, whatever it was I was taking.

 

Aimee Mann  22:05

I started to go to Al Anon, you know, which is a 1212, step program. I had a lot of, a lot of there. I mean, there was a point where I had always, I think it was going to therapy like five times a week, you know, just, yeah, not, not doing great, but I definitely wouldn’t say it’s just it’s success. It is, you know, things just catch up to you. I think also like, don’t you? Don’t you feel like, by the time you sort of hit your early 40s, all the coping mechanisms that really worked before or just, like, starting to break down, and then you’re like, I’m out of ideas.

 

David Duchovny  22:45

Yeah, and I’m still, I’m still miserable. Why is that? You know, there’s, I think that I also had this kind of, yeah, I guess this, this was a an illusion or delusion, and maybe you share it as an artist, which was, well, if I make these chaotic vectors within me, not chaotic, if I solve these riddles, if I figure out these problems, I’m not going to be creative anymore. You know, I’m not going to.

 

Aimee Mann  23:21

I think I, fortunately, did not ever have to. Did not have that particular obstacle to overcome. I never, I never thought that, because for me, being depressed just meant I couldn’t work at all. You know, I just couldn’t get anything done because you can’t access anything so that. So I never thought that. But, you know, like I also started, I started therapy when I was, like, early 30s, and and I got a lot out of it. So I, you know, I’ve always felt like it was only a benefit creatively, and that depression was not didn’t fucking help at all. Yeah, like sitting around, like not being able to get out of bed. Like, how is that more creative?

 

David Duchovny  24:07

Yeah, I guess for me, it was just like, I’ve got to find another venue to because I whatever I’m doing, I still feel shitty, so I’m gonna try writing. I’m gonna and I see you. You know you’re doing, you’re you draw. And I wonder, what is the impulse that’s driving you, not away from songwriting and performing, but also, in addition to what’s not being addressed in the songwriting that you can address in drawing, or is it just like something you enjoy doing, and I shouldn’t read too much into it.

 

Aimee Mann  24:45

I like a challenge. And there’s a handful of graphic novels that I was just very inspired by. And then there was a cartoonist I really admired that i. I had do some artwork for me. I became friends with him, and there was another cartoonist who moved down the street, and we started hanging out and drawing cartoons together. So it was always like a thing. I mean, I’ve been playing with the idea of doing a graphic memoir for you know, like, 15 years, but it which I and I’m doing it now, but it’s just like a gigantic undertaking. And, you know, I think doing the cartoons and posting them on Instagram was just like good practice, and made me think, like, well, maybe I could manage to do this, although drawings very hard. I mean, I don’t know, like, there’s something fun about starting almost at the ground level and and something creative and going, like, could I do this? If I really practice, like, what would it take?

 

David Duchovny  25:55

Yeah, I mean, that’s really how music happened for me. I mean, it was not only that question that you just asked was like, could it happen? But also getting back to a feeling of being new at anything is kind of a beautiful place to be, you know, the Zen Mind, beginner’s mind, or whatever it’s like, oh, all these kind of rudimentary questions are coming at me at a point at which, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been doing stuff with a certain kind of expertise for a while, and now I have none of that. And that feels kind of great, it’s accessing some other part of my brain that has that’s turned off. I think, I don’t know.

 

Aimee Mann  26:35

Yeah and then I think, along with that is that the music business changed so much, and people stop buying records. So, like, a little bit, you’re like, does anybody care about me? Like, if I make another record, who was really going to care? So, you know, you have that on one hand and on the other hand, you know, I’d be curious to see if I could write music for a musical or, you know, like, maybe I could write a graphic memoir, that kind of thing.

 

David Duchovny  27:07

Yeah, so does that? Does that? Does that factor into your kind of desire to write more music that the looking at the state of the business right now?

 

Aimee Mann  27:16

I think the thing that I’m most interested in is writing music for a musical because I’m I’m more interested in writing songs that have like it’s more of a challenge to say, write a song for this character to sing, and the character is saying this, but in that the by the end of the Song, the character needs to be here. That’s like a real because, you know, when you’re writing sort of, you know, pop music or singer song or music, or whatever my genre is, you can get away. I mean, I get away with but like you tend to write in a more, you know, poetic image base, like the it’s not necessarily writing in paragraphs, like a, you know, like a person talking. That’s a lot harder. It’s easier to sort of have, you know fragments of images and you know fragments of narrative.

 

David Duchovny  28:19

Right, the name of your podcast is Straw Into Gold, is that right?

 

Aimee Mann  28:25

Yeah.

 

David Duchovny  28:26

It was. And it’s kind of germane to what we’ve been talking about in terms of depression and work and that kind of stuff, I guess, because I don’t know the podcast, but I’m aware of the phrase, you know, you’re talking about taking wounds or failure, as we talk about on this podcast, and and turning them into gold through some process of creativity or or therapy or whatever. I mean, I’m assuming that.

 

Aimee Mann  28:53

Yeah, it is. I talked to like, four different people, and, you know, who have had trauma in their life, and like, what their relationship, how that did sort of translate it into a creative life, you know? And it’s really interesting how, you know, for some people, it’s, you know, it is transformative. So it’s not like, you know, it’s not therapy, exactly, but it’s, can be therapeutic. It’s sort of therapy adjacent, you know, it’s not like a a substitute for therapy, but it can reveal, you know, I’ve certainly had many, many moments where I’ve written something in a song or, you know, and I’m singing it later, and I go, Oh, that’s what, that’s the subtext for that, or that also applies to this other thing, yeah.

 

David Duchovny  29:46

Yeah, would, I mean, I was, as I said, I’ve been a fan of yours for many, many years, but I didn’t know your personal history at all. And I was, I mean, I. It’s specifically dramatic and shocking. And I was, I started to think about, you know, when you were saying, strong to gold, you know, I know we like to have this as artists. We like to have this, this hope that we’re going to turn our wounds into into something that is beautiful for someone else as well, not just for ourselves. But there are some wounds that you can’t create out of some wounds are, I think some wounds are almost lethal. You know, it’s like, I don’t want to belittle, like, traumas that can’t be turned into a song, or traumas that can’t be turned you know, you know what I mean, and it’s I like on this podcast, talking about failure and talking about how failure can be used as a tool of humility and of empathy and all these things, but sometimes I feel, you know, talking to very successful people, it’s an illusion that I’m giving because it’s like there’s some shit that happens that you can’t write out of that you could and agree objectively. I could say, when I read what happened to you as a child, I’d say, well, I don’t know. I don’t know how one writes out of that, but you have, you know.

 

Aimee Mann  31:24

I mean, again, I don’t, you know. I think that with PTSD, there’s part of your brain that is, like, I need to tell this story, and you need to tell this story because you sort of don’t really know the story, like you can know part of the story, but, you know, like my family’s situation was, like, my mother and her illicit lover kidnapped me and kidnapped his kids, and, like, absconded to Europe, and, you know, I was probably found nine months later or something, and brought back, and then never saw my mother again. And so that, like, sounds like a dramatic story. And to me, like, you know, earlier in my life, it was like, check out this fun story. But, you know, like, but I, like, literally had no feeling about it. And I mean, it kind of is only in you can only write it about obliquely, because you’re like, I don’t have any feeling. I’m like, I’m not going to write a story about a kid who loses their mother because I am devoid of emotion around that. I don’t think about her and feel sad. I don’t really have any memories of her, or certainly don’t remember anything that was affectionate. Her boyfriend was an asshole. You know, I was glad to get away from them, but like, logic would dictate that there probably is, like, you know, some like, another subtext. And so I think that’s like, part of your brain is like, here is how I’m going to tell that story. I’m going to tell it by I’m going to tell it obliquely by having a different narrative, but that fits that feeling, and there’s something useful about that, but I don’t does it make it go away? Probably not. I don’t know. It’s just, it’s like a, it’s just like a, you know, a turtle, baby turtle, trying to make its way to the sea. Like it’s a cognitive instinct, but I don’t know if it processes it and it’s, you know, the other thing is, like, very hard to process and write away stuff that you don’t remember and that you only remember by way of, you know, panic attacks And, you know, anxiety and, like, terrible depression that’s triggered by something that you think might be this, but you can’t really tell because you can’t fucking remember it. You know, it’s a way of remembering to have a panic attack, you know, like, if you were bitten by a dog as a kid, you don’t remember it, and then you have a panic attack when you see a dog, you can conclude that’s what’s happening, but all you’re left with is the fucking panic attack. So how do you process a thing you don’t remember, I don’t know yet to be determined, that is your that’s the subject of your next podcast.

 

David Duchovny  34:14

Well, I think, in a way, you know, yeah, that it’s one of these things, like, as a parent, you know, I was talking to Gabor Mate, who’s like, a really smart addiction guy, and he said, Yeah, the most important years are pre verbal zero to three. And I was like, oh shit, dude. I wish I would have known that.

 

Aimee Mann  34:33

I know we’re fart.

 

David Duchovny  34:37

If you get a pass three, you’re fine. If you get them past three, you’re fine.

 

Aimee Mann  34:40

Yeah, and oops.

 

David Duchovny  34:43

So what are we to do with that and beyond that? How do we, how do we reach out and try to understand other people who are, who are experiencing the same kind of confusion? I It must. It must just feel like confusion because there’s, there’s no logic or word on it, Word Sonnet.

 

Aimee Mann  35:00

It’s totally confusing, and it makes me crazy. You know, to be beset by, you know, panic attacks, or anxiety attacks, or whatever, you know, whatever you call it, or, you know, a nameless sense of dread, which is fucking fun. And you’re like, Why? Why? Like, you know, there’s a reason. You’re like, I’m pretty sure something happened that probably looks like this, but I can’t remember it. I mean, you know, I do think that there’s the interesting thing about songwriting is the music part is all subtext and subconscious, and then you put language on it, and it is like processing right brain, left brain, back and forth. You know, has it helped me? I don’t know. I mean, I’m functioning, like I’m technically functioning. I would rather not have the occasional periods of dread, but there’s certainly been periods where, like I was way less functioning. So I guess it’s a win.

 

David Duchovny  36:37

What I’m amazed at is your love of Steely Dan. I did not see that coming at all, because I don’t associate you musically with stealing. I love Steely Dan myself when I was in high school and my yearbook quote, we got the quote your, you know, got it was, actually, I’m never going to do it without the fez on.

 

Aimee Mann  37:02

I mean that. Okay, so here’s my explanation, um, when I, was, like, in high school, or what, you know, whenever silly Dan was, you know, before high school, but like, when they were first out, their audience was, like, a real all male, but in very snarky and also pretty misogynist, like all the people I knew who were really into silly Dan, like, were it? Were interested in the sort of threat of misogyny, and interested in, like, you know, the sort of dirty little secrets that you know, like this sort of dirty stuff you know, like dirty movies, or, you know, Haitian divorce, kind of, you know, like, because they were kind of like CD stories. And so I liked it musically, but was sort of put off by that. And then later on, when I started listening to, you know, this is a real subtext thing, you know, the thing about songwriting is that the music is the subtext and it can’t, it can’t be divorced from the the words, you know, the and I feel like the lyrics. First of all, it’s like grade a lyric writing, and very cinematic, like real storytellers, and just like very skillful lyric writing too, but the subtext of the music is often really fucking sad, and you’re like, Oh, these are like broken, traumatized people who, at least one is caught in the throes of drug addiction and is trying to put some braggadocio on it to sort of justify his choices. And it’s just not working. Like it doesn’t. It never feels I never listen to a Steely Dan song ago, wow, they really sold me on the Babylon sisters, you know. So I feel like there’s a subtext of, like, it just sad, like sad and broken and depressed, and which is, you know, which I can relate to. And I relate to those, the juxtaposition of lyric and melody.

 

David Duchovny  39:14

I think for me, it was so oblique. Their lyric writing was so seemingly impersonal, you know, that they had kind of that they were obviously talking about personal matters and what you say, depression, sadness, things like that. But they were putting it through this blender of noir film or whatever, these characters that they come across, it wasn’t in any way you never get a direct statement in a of even love in a stele and love song, you know. And that to me, I think artistically, I was kind of reaching out to that, you know, like listening to top 40 radio. It was all these very, you know, the statements were there, you know, the lyrics were on the surface much of the time. And so I was,  reaching for that. And what you talk about the sadness of depression, I mean, you know, my my favorite line. And it’s like, the essence of this podcast was they got a name for the winners in the world. I want a name when I lose, you know? Like, yeah, that I wouldn’t mind that on my tombstone, you know? And it’s like, that’s what I was responding to, I think. And it’s also interesting to think about their kind of arc. Because they were, they were super popular, but they were kind of critically reviled at the time, really.

 

Aimee Mann  40:28

Oh, that’s interesting. I don’t think I was aware of their.

 

David Duchovny  40:33

Well, because they were, they were jazzy, you know, like the rock purists who had this fantasy that there was something called pure rock and roll, which never really existed.

 

Aimee Mann  40:43

And I think critics in that era, really, you know, always did revere more kind of, like the blues based, more Americana sort of thing. But, you know, that’s the other amazing thing about Steely Dan, like they created their own genre, and no one else has really lived up to that genre, like it is, it is their own, because I don’t like fusion and prod like, that’s not my thing at all.

 

David Duchovny  41:11

No, yes for you, no, yes?

 

Aimee Mann  41:19

Yeah, but silly day and I could literally listen to over and over and over. Never get sick of it. Have not gotten sick of a single song.

 

David Duchovny  41:26

Right, do you because I used to, you know, come up with my own interpretations of their songs. I’m wondering like, Have you been subjected to interesting interpretations of your songs? And do you sometimes go, yeah, that’s actually better than what I meant, you know.

 

Aimee Mann  41:40

I’m not, I don’t know, not really. I mean, I, you know, like, when I first started writing songs, I think I was under the impression that people would really analyze your lyrics and, you know, and that you had to, like, justify, you know, that you were like, there was gonna be lyric court, and then he passed you Yeah. And then people would say, like, well, what does this line mean? How does that line relate to this like, which probably, like, helped me, you know, double check lyrics and and, you know, try to be as good as I as I could be. But the only time it’s I wrote a song, I wrote a song that a boyfriend assumed was about him, and it was could not have been further. In fact, it wasn’t even about what he thought it was about. I mean, it wasn’t even like a relationship song, really.

 

David Duchovny  42:28

What is your your personal criteria for the success and a failure of a particular song? Do you sometimes go, I, why do I love that song more than others? Why Do other people seem to love this song, you know, more than others of my songs you know? Is that kind of an alchemy that you’re interested in, or is it just something I give it to the world and now it belongs out there. It’s no longer mine, in a way.

 

Aimee Mann  42:53

I don’t ever think about how other people are going to react to a song when I write when I write it. I have my own standard about what’s good, and I can’t, I don’t always measure up to that standard. And sometimes you just have to, you just have to go, like, I can’t work on this thing forever, like I don’t have any more ideas about it. And that in the past, that’s usually translated into, I feel like it needs a bridge, but I just don’t have an idea for one. Or I feel like this rhyme isn’t great, but I don’t know how to put it any other way. You know, I think as I get older and do it more, I have something kind of kicked in where I have an intuition about I know that there is a way. I know this could be better. I can feel that there’s like a better rhyme or a better line, there’s a better there’s a way to put this, or there’s a turn of praise. And so I’ll keep working until I hit that because I kind of can feel it out there, you know? But before it was like, you’re inspired, you work while you’re inspired, and then you’re like, I gotta finish it. And you’re like, I don’t have that’s it. Inspiration is over. I didn’t it didn’t last to like, me having a bridge or a third verse, like, that’s the way it goes.

 

David Duchovny  44:20

Is that your conception of how inspiration is that your is that your feeling of that kind of spiritual situation that you find yourself in being inspired, and that it that it’s germane to a particular song that you’re working on, and not transferable to some other song, and then you kind of reach the end of that inspiration, and now, for whatever reason, you’re tired and you can’t, you can’t finish it.

 

Aimee Mann  44:46

I think, I think nowadays it works differently. I think that inspiration is more a thing that happens just when I start working, like when I start working on something, and I start to. Blame. It’s like, I don’t have to be inspired in this magical way. I can really just sit down and ask myself, What do you want to say? And then think of a few ways to say it. And like, one of them doesn’t work. It doesn’t fit the rhyme scheme, but I immediately come up. It’s just like easier to to not hit a brick wall with it.

 

David Duchovny  45:23

Is that different from when you were younger, when you kind of, do you think you kind of relied on whatever that mystical idea of inspiration is when you were younger? Now, as you become kind of a master, or attain more mastery, that you know that there’s a process you can go through and that you’ll get to the end of it?

 

Aimee Mann  45:40

Yeah, I think when I was younger, it really was like it either happened or it didn’t happen and I couldn’t there was nothing I could do to keep it going, whereas I can keep it going just by continuing to work, right? Yeah, like, it’s just easier. It’s just have more access to it.

 

David Duchovny  45:59

Right was your voice? Always this voice? Did you work on your voice at Berkeley? No?

 

Aimee Mann  46:05

I mean, I took voice lessons at Berkeley, and I never understood what, you know, breathe from your diaphragm into I never understood it. I never felt like it made any difference. So when I, you know, my first band was, like a punk band, and I was just, you know, it was just, like screaming and, yeah, you know, like a crazy faux opera, you know, because I was trying to make it be as ridiculous, you know, like as crazy as possible. So, you know, thank God for, like, punk and new wave, because it was like, you know, come one, come all. You don’t have to know what you’re doing. And that was really fun, but it was also good practice to just be on stage and trying things. And, you know, I just find now that singing is, is there’s like a million little micro muscles that, you know, there’s certain, you know, if I’m singing a certain note where I put it in my mouth and like, what, yeah, the back of my throat feels like it’s like, you just learn that by doing 50 zillion times.

 

David Duchovny  47:15

Do you if you’re recording? We all have limitations that we struggle against as artists, and we all have limitations just in our voices. So as you’ve gone on, as you create workarounds, as you create ways to sing into your strengths, away from your strengths. Have you been aware of that kind of a growth?

 

Aimee Mann  47:36

I feel my voice is very limited. I can’t sing loud, which makes me crazy. There’s no I feel like I have no power. I can never get, like, a rock sound, or it’s like, just soft folky. It doesn’t matter how mad I am, or, like, energetic, you know, but if I sing a take in the studio and I’m like, that was really it just like, sounds strained, and it still sounds soft and folky, but now it’s strained, or like, now it’s sharp, you know, like, it never and I just have to go like, this is how it is. I sing softly, and I don’t have much of a range, and that like, that is just so that’s the way it goes, like, so not everybody is kids to can do everything like, I don’t have, like, Great types, you know, it’s like, seeing in a very conversational style, and which, like, kind of, you know, that’s what I like in other people anyway, so that’s fine, but, you know, it is what it is. And I just have to, you know, a lot of times I have to go, like, I know you want to sing this very energetically and like and sing it out and powerful, but you don’t have that, and you’re gonna blow you’ll just blow it out if you try. So, you know, keep it soft and intimate.

 

David Duchovny  48:51

Intimate is the word I’m thinking of. And I guess the other part of that question was just like, super mechanical, which was, how many times would you say you like to sing a song before you record it.

 

Aimee Mann  49:02

That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter. I mean, I can Ken and have written a song in the living room and gone right into the studio to sing it. In the studio, I will sing. I used to do five takes and we would comp vocal takes, and now I just do three, because the take number one and take five are never good. And it’s like, yeah, so why  bother?

 

David Duchovny  49:30

So there’s no like, let’s, let’s just stay on take number one. There’s none of that kind of live energy. They were trying this for the first time, like, as an actor, I kind of like, take number one. It’s never, it’s never the it’s never good all the way through. But there’s a kind of discovery in it that can be a certain kind of energy. I don’t know. Do you ever feel that way?

 

Aimee Mann  49:54

I in my head, I can hear what the perfect vocal like. What it what it’s gonna sound like. And to me, it’s just hitting all the marks. It’s like I can because the melody and the way I’m singing it are like the same. So I, I mean, it never, it never varies. I can tell, you know, when I listen back to it, I can tell if I’ve hit it or not, because it’s in my head. So, you know? And then the first take is just your kind of, your actual voice is just warming up. And then the fifth take, you’re sick of it. So, you know, I mean, you sing anything five times in a row, you’re like, I’m done with this song. So, you know, David, you could ever, however you try, you can never get away from failure disappointment.

 

David Duchovny  50:41

Well, thank God I said, because that’s it’s the human condition, you know, we’re all failing. And thank God we have artists like you who can put words and melodies on it. And I thank you for that. And the last thing that I would ask you is, is it not going to stop until I wise up? Is that really true?

 

Aimee Mann  51:03

I think so. It’s not just, yeah, there’s no outside element that’s going to come in and stop it for you, David.

 

David Duchovny  51:09

Thank you.

 

David Duchovny  51:24

Hey, thinking about the Aimee Mann interview, and I didn’t have the songs of my recall like I wanted to, because I really do listen to her music, or I did. I did listen at one point a lot, and she was a companion in many ways. Her consciousness, as displayed through her lyric writing and through her music, was a companion to me, a kindred soul. I thought, I think especially probably going through a breakup way back in the early 90s listening to whatever Aimee Mann was a great breakup singer, and I think I just lived in that space trying to get information, you know, both as the man and the woman in the relationship. You know, I had my information as a man, and now I was hearing demonstrably female perspective. And I loved when she said, you know that spite is an underrated motivation for writing songs, the songs of spite. Spite is a word you don’t hear very much anymore, but it’s a powerful one. There’s, I didn’t want to talk about this, this, like, prevailing narrative around Aimee, which is, you know, she was slated for a huge rock and roll stardom, and then, you know, just became, you know, a decent seller, but a beloved songwriter, genius and kind of had an alternate career to the one that was projected for her. I think that’s boring to me, and I’m sure it’s boring to Aimee at this point, and untrue, because you are the artist that you are, whether or not mega sales happen, mega popularity. That’s luck and timing and talent, obviously, but there’s a lot of luck and there’s a lot of timing involved. So ultimately, like any discussion of fame, you know, ultimately bores me. I don’t know why people are still so fascinated with the subject of fame or the subject of commercial success, that’s all.

 

CREDITS  53:59

There’s more Fail Better with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now on Apple podcasts. Fail Better as a production of Lemonada media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Kegan Zema, Aria Bracci, and Dani Matias, Paula Kaplan   . Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neil. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Karpinski and Brad Davidson, the show’s executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova, Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band. Lovely Colin Lee. Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian […]. You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia and you can find me @DavidDuchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.