![]() “Mental Illness” won a Grammy for best folk album although it had a good amount of orchestration, Recording Academy gatekeepers were able to focus enough on the finger-picking acoustic guitar aspects to enter it in the folk division. The songs largely transcend their theatrical origins - it’s definitely not a musical spin through the DSM-5 manual - though a little context doesn’t hurt. ![]() The singer-songwriter was conscripted to write songs for a stage musical, also based on the book but unrelated to the film, also to be called “Girl, Interrupted” - and when plans to further develop and produce that got put on hold, Mann decided to make it her next record. If that sounds familiar by some other name, the book Mann’s record is based on was called “Girl, Interrupted,” famous for having been turned into a feature film in 1999. ![]() Her just-released new album, “Queens of the Summer Hotel,” takes its cues from a 1993 memoir by Susanna Keysen, who wrote about her experiences being institutionalized at the McLean Hospital. “Yeah, there was definitely a part of me thinking, well, this is a frying pan/fire scenario.” Aimee Mann’s last album, a Grammy winner in 2018, was bluntly called “Mental Illness.” So where do you go from there? How about a song cycle based on a book set in an actual mental institution? “That’s on-the-nose, I know,” she laughs.
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