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Michael Penn | |
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 Penn in 2007 | |
| Born | Michael Daniel Penn (1958-08-01)August 1, 1958 (age 67) |
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| Relatives | Sean Penn (brother) Chris Penn (brother) Dylan Penn (niece) Hopper Penn (nephew) |
| Musical career | |
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| Years active | 1989–present |
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| Formerly of | Doll Congress |
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Musical artist | |
| Website | michaelpenn |
Michael Daniel Penn (born August 1, 1958) is an American musician, singer, and composer. His 1989 single "No Myth" was a top 20 hit in the U.S. and successful in several other countries.
Penn was born Michael Daniel Penn on August 1, 1958 in theGreenwich Village neighborhood ofManhattan. He is the first son of actor and directorLeo Penn and actressEileen Ryan, and the brother of actorsSean Penn andChris Penn. He is ofLithuanian-Jewish (paternal) andIrish–Italian (maternal) descent. Penn began playing music in junior high school and attendedSanta Monica High School.[1]
Prior to the release of his 1989 debut albumMarch, Penn was a member of the Los Angeles bandDoll Congress. Penn was one of two musical guests as a solo artist onSaturday Night Live on the October 24, 1987 episode, with his brother Sean hosting. Penn had also appeared as anextra on a few television series, includingSt. Elsewhere.
March, particularly the first single, "No Myth", brought Penn attention, as well as the 1990MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. Penn's follow-up albumsFree-for-All (1992),Resigned (1997),MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident (2000),Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947 (2005) andPalms and Runes, Tarot and Tea (2007) were not able to match the commercial success ofMarch, although critics continued to praise his songcraft.
Penn's second album,Free-for-All, was praised by critics but was not as commercially successful as his debut.Rolling Stone called it "stunning"[2] andCMJ wrote that the album "exhausts any doubts" about whetherMarch was a fluke.[3]
Penn collaborated with surrealist animators theBrothers Quay on "Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)", which was shown onMTV as well as in film festivals around the country.[citation needed]
He has worked extensively creating original music for film. HescoredPaul Thomas Anderson's filmsHard Eight (1996) andBoogie Nights (1997); he also appears in the latter in acameo role as a recording engineer. During the editing of the film, Anderson directed a music video with Penn for "Try" fromResigned, which was filmed in one long shot (the video can be found on theBoogie Nights DVD). Other films scored by Penn includeAlan Cumming's first two directorial efforts,The Anniversary Party andSuffering Man's Charity;[4]American Teen,Sunshine Cleaning;[5] the documentaryThe Comedians of Comedy; andThe Last Kiss. In 2003, he was nominated for a DVDX Award for Best Original Score in a DVD Premiere Movie forMelvin Goes to Dinner.[6] He co-producedLiz Phair (2003) by Liz Phair.[7]
In August 2005, Penn releasedMr. Hollywood Jr., 1947 on his own Mimeograph Records label. Its songs are set against the background of post-World War II Los Angeles; Penn said he chose the year because of several notable events that took place then, including the passage of theNational Security Act and the invention of thetransistor.[8] The album wasreissued byLegacy Recordings in April 2007 with bonus tracks from aKCRW session.[9]
The reissue came in conjunction with Legacy's release ofPalms and Runes, Tarot and Tea: A Michael Penn Collection, a compilation that includes several alternate versions and previously unreleased songs. Penn said his goal in compiling, ordering tracks for and producingPalms and Runes was to "make it feel like an album" in its own right.[citation needed]
In late 2009, Penn composed the music for the filmThat Evening Sun.[10] In 2012, Penn began work as the composer for the HBO TV showGirls.[11] In January 2013, theGirls Vol. 1 soundtrack was released oniTunes. The album contained a new song by Michael Penn titled "On Your Way", which was featured in the finale of Season 1.
He also joined the crew ofShowtime'sMasters of Sex in 2013 as series composer. The show's pilot episode was initially set to be scored byThomas Newman, but this did not come to fruition and Penn scored both the pilot and the rest of the series.
In 2018, he joinedGood Girls on NBC andHere and Now on HBO as a composer. In 2020, Penn released a new single, "A Revival". It was his first non-soundtrack work in 15 years.[12]
| This section of abiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Michael Penn" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(February 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Penn met fellow singer-songwriterAimee Mann, and during the recording of her albumI'm with Stupid (to which Penn contributed), the two struck up a friendship, which blossomed into romance and their subsequent marriage on December 29, 1997. Together with managerMichael Hausman they formedUnited Musicians, an independent music collective founded on "the principle that every artist should be able to retain copyright ownership of the work he or she has created and that this ownership is the basis for artistic strength and true independence."[13] Penn and Mann live in Los Angeles.
His niece and nephew are actorsDylan Penn andHopper Penn.
| Title | Year | Peak chart positions | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US [14] | AUS [15] | SWE [16] | ||
| March | 1989 | 31 | 50 | 27 |
| Free-for-All | 1992 | 160 | — | — |
| Resigned | 1997 | — | — | — |
| MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident | 2000 | — | — | — |
| Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947 | 2005 | — | — | — |
| Year | Title | Chart positions | Album | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US [17] | US Mod. Rock [18] | AUS [15] | BEL (FL) [19] | NLD [20] | |||
| 1989 | "No Myth" | 13 | 4 | 24 | 46 | 48 | March |
| 1990 | "This & That" | 53 | 10 | 86 | — | 74 | |
| "Brave New World" | — | 20 | — | — | — | ||
| 1992 | "Seen the Doctor" | — | 5 | — | — | — | Free-for-All |
| "Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)" | — | 14 | — | — | — | ||
| 1997 | "Try" | — | — | — | — | — | Resigned |
| "Me Around" | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| "Out of My Hands" | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| 2000 | "Lucky One" | — | — | — | — | — | MP4 |
| 2020 | "A Revival" | — | — | — | — | — | |
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