Aimee Mann – @#%&*! Smilers (2008)

I was first introduced to Aimee Mann a long time ago, but it took me quite a while to actually fully start appreciating her music. She's one of those musicians whose all songs sound quite similar when you start listening to her, but with further investigation and time given to her songs, you start recognising the amazing quality of her songs and all the subtle nuances in them. This is the first album I owned by Aimee Mann. She has got better ones as well, but as my partner already owns those, I haven't bought them myself. That's not to say that @#%&*! Smilers isn't a good album, because it really is. One thing that affected my decision to give Aimee Mann another try was the fact that Mark "E" Oliver Everett, the frontman of Eels wrote about touring with Mann back in the day in his autobiography. He really spoke highly of her and I'm a huge fan of E, so I decided to give her another chance and I really think it paid off.



Most people know Aimee Mann from the movie Magnolia. I had also seen that film, but I didn't remember the music that well and later on when I was introduced to Aimee mann, I didn't realise that it was her music in that film. Later on those songs from that film have become really important to me.

What really made Mann important to me was when I saw her live at the Royal Festival Hall here in London. Seeing her live was a better chance to really listen to her lyrics and I feel like she had a great presence on stage. I felt really emotional and in a couple of songs I actually cried a little bit, just from finding events of my own life in the lyrics. After that gig, i have really been listening to Aimee Mann a lot.

This album has many great songs, but my favourite is probably Borrowing Time. This song has an amazing melon and swing. It really brings out Mann's songwriting skills. I also really like the horns on the background. The other song that's worth mentioning is the last song on the album, Ballantines. It's a duet with the musician Sean Hayes. His vocals are absolutely brilliant and they go very nicely together with Mann's vocals. Mann has a quite low voice and Hayes on the other hand has quite high voice and I like how lower female voice works with the higher male voice.

Mann's music videos are not usually anything special, but as the tradition goes, I want to include at least one music video to all my blog posts. I'll add the music video for the opening song of the album, Freeway. The video is mainly just Mann singing at the front while a man and a woman do crazy things in fast forward in the background.

It's kind of difficult to describe Mann's musical style. It's quite straightforward pop rock, but at the same time I feel like it's not really made for charts, so I don't know if it should be called indie pop instead. Anyway, I think singer-songwriter describes her music more than anything else.

Aimee Mann is making steadily good albums all the time, and even though her music hardly brings anything groundbreaking into the music scene, she has many songs that are quite important to me. I feel like you need to see some effort into getting into her songs, but when you do, it rewards you.

Listen to the album on Spotify.