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Songfacts®:

• Aimee Mann is a hot mess in "Save Me," her most popular song. (As a solo artist, at least. She fronted a band called 'Til Tuesday that had a big hit with "Voices Carry" in 1985.)
  
  In the song, she's looking for someone to save her emotionally, hoping that will solve her problems. Sounds like a therapist would be a better option.
• Mann explained the meaning of "Save Me" in the liner notes to her albumBachelor No. 2 Or, The Last Remains Of The Dodo:
  
  "It's very simple, but so melodic. There aren't a lot of lyrics, but the ones that are there I feel are pretty well-written. It's so satisfying to find words that sum up such a complicated feeling, the feeling that you're fragmenting, and looking to other people to hold you together. Of course the singer is barking up the wrong tree yet again, but it's their best thinking."
• This line in the chorus Mann calls "another whole realm of self-doubt":
  
  If you could save me
  From the ranks of the freaks
  Who suspect they could never love anyone
  
  She says it was inspired by her friend Dave Foley, a comic actor known for roles onNewsRadio andYoung Sheldon. Mann says he "once told me that he was afraid he was just incapable of sustaining love in a relationship, which I used right there in that last line."
  
  Foley says he and Mann were "sort of involved for a while," and the song is indeed about him. He had gone through a divorce and was devastated emotionally. When she and Mann got involved, she discovered just how much of a wreck he was.
  
  "She went out on tour, and one day when she was in Paris, she called me on the phone at around 3 in the morning, and she played this song to me, the song 'Save Me,'"Foley told The Current. "She wrote it about me. And to a guy whose ego was just shattered from living with an insane person for 11 years first off to be liked by someone as amazing as Aimee, and then to have this song written was such a balm to my soul at that point. This was also a hugely important song - and hugely important moment - in my life that sort of sent me into my single life after that for the next five or six years."
• The song plays in a pivotal scene from the 1999 movieMagnolia, and first appeared on the film's soundtrack. The movie was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who used Mann's music as inspiration in the film; she wrote and performed eight songs that appear on the soundtrack, including "Wise Up," which she originally wrote forJerry Maguire.
  
  The movie is over three hours long and is filled with characters who are broken and in many cases, toxic. And at one point it rains frogs.
• "Save Me" got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song but lost to one of the usual suspects: Phil Collins, who took the prize for "You'll Be In My Heart" fromTarzan.
• Aimee's man is Michael Penn, a fellow singer-songwriter who had a hit in 1990 with "No Myth" (he's the actor Sean Penn's older brother). They got married in 1997 and are still together, so by the time this song was released in 1999, Mann had a stable relationship to lean on, unlike the character in the song.
• Mann said she was going for "a real Beatles thing" with the background vocals, sung by Jon Brion, Buddy Judge and Michael Lockwood. And the drums, played by John Sands, also had a Beatles influence. "I always loved the way Ringo's playing was always so stripped down: he wouldn't necessarily just play 8th notes on the hi-hat," Mann explained. "So I wanted to try it with the guitar playing the 8th notes and the drums laying back a little."
• "Save Me" has a very memorable opening line:
  
  You look like a perfect fit
  For a girl in need of a tourniquet
  
  Mann almost talked herself out of it. "I remember spending a long time considering the rhyme of 'tourniquet' and 'fit,' trying to figure out if it was a real rhyme or not," she said. "I always use the standard of how words sound in my natural speaking voice. I say 'tourniquit,' so it passed."
• "Save Me" was released as a single in 2000, months after it appeared in the movieMagnolia. In America, it didn't chart, which is surprising considering how well known the song has become, but it was a victim of timing. Just a few years earlier, female singer-songwriters like Jewel and Sheryl Crow were landing hits and touring on the Lilith Fair, but by 2000, singers who could dance - Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and the like - had bumped them aside.
  
  In fact, Mann had just one appearance on the Hot 100: "That's Just What You Are," which went to #93 in 1995 (she had five with 'Til Tuesday). Mann, though, didn't aggressively promote herself, and by the time she released her third album,Bachelor No. 2 Or, The Last Remains Of The Dodo, she was an independent artist. Many listeners found "Save Me" on theMagnolia soundtrack, which also contains two Supertramp songs and one by Harry Nilsson along with the eight by Mann. That album sold over 500,000 copies, which is far more than any of Mann's other albums, includingBachelor No. 2 Or, The Last Remains Of The Dodo, which also includes "Save Me."
• In the music video, Aimee Mann appears in scenes fromMagnolia, interacting with the characters. These scenes look very real because they are. Paul Thomas Anderson shot the scenes while making the film, so after he got the takes he wanted for the movie, he would do another with Mann inserted.

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