Aimee Mann has announced a new album, Queens of the Summer Hotel. It’s the follow-up to 2017’s Mental Illness and it’s due out November 5 via her SuperEgo label. The album’s 15 tracks were inspired by Susanna Kaysen’s classic memoir Girl, Interrupted, which she had previously been tapped to write music for the stage adaptation of. With COVID putting plans for the musical on hold, she turned the songs into an album, instead. “I honestly felt almost possessed when I was writing this record as I’ve never written so fast and intensely,” she says. “I found the material very interesting and obviously really personal. I had specific ideas about what I thought the character’s backstory could be and incorporated a lot of shared experiences to flesh out specific characters discussed in the memoir.”

The first single is “Suicide is Murder,” and you can watch the accompanying video, directed by Rob Hatch-Miller and Puloma Basu, below. “I started to write this song because I’ve known people who committed suicide and friends who’ve had loved ones die from suicide,” Aimee says. “I think the phrase ‘suicide is murder’ took on a meaning for me as it’s the worst thing to have to deal with in the aftermath. It’s just terrible. Because every person who knows the person who committed suicide will blame themselves in some way for not noticing or stepping in or doing something. They’ll till the end of their days, say, ‘Was there something I could have done?'”

Aimee has a few tour dates coming up in September supporting Rufus Wainwright in California. See those below.

Aimee Mann – Queens of the Summer Hotel Tracklist
1. You Fall
2. Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath
3. Give Me Fifteen
4. At The Frick Museum
5. Home By Now
6. Checks
7. Little Chameleon
8. You Don’t Have The Room
9. Suicide Is Murder
10. You Could Have Been A Roosevelt
11. Burn It Out
12. In Mexico
13. Check (reprise)
14. You’re Lost
15. I See You

AIMEE MANN: 2021 TOUR
9/9/21 The Greek Theatre Los Angeles (LA), CA *
9/10/21 Humphreys By The Bay San Diego *
9/12/21 Mountain Winery Saratoga, CA *

* – w/ Rufus Wainwright