Aimee Mann Gets a Taste of YouTube Success

Posted on Jun 23rd 2008 1:00PM by Denise Sheppard
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Tired of singing in the shower? Want to show your inner soft-rock-star to the world? Aimee Mann is currently hosting a contest on YouTube to encourage fans to sing her new music to the world. Her management came up with the idea, admits Mann, after watching fans cover her 'Magnolia' movie hit 'Save Me' on the internet. "They sat in the office and watched them all, then called me and said, 'They are actually kind of awesome! We should do a contest, and have people make videos for [the single] 'Freeway,'" Mann tells Spinner. "It was a good idea." Mann -- who releases her music independently on her own SuperEgo Records, including her latest album, '@#%&*! Smilers' -- put an instrumental mp3 of the track up on her website so that entrants who don't play instruments could sing along to her original backing track.

Truth is, the video announcing the competition is as entertaining as many of the entrants' videos, filled with clips of unbeknownst YouTubers who have previously covered Mann's music in their own bedrooms and home studios. The singer admits to being shocked that -- just weeks after the contest's kickoff -- her own video announcement has itself already been viewed 400,000 times.

"That totally boggles my mind!" she says. "As if there aren't about a million other things on YouTube they could be watching." The contest winner -- which will be chosen by Mann herself in mid-July -- will get to perform onstage with the singer at one of her live shows, as well as receive bragging rights and a momentary chance to stand out amongst the millions of YouTube videos. Mann is excited at the process of going through the 'Freeway' covers, but jokingly hopes that the contest isn't overly successful. "I can't wait to have a little time to sit down and go through them all," she says. "Looking through hundreds of videos, however, would be a little daunting. Dozens would be ideal."

As for that album title, Mann doesn't miss a beat. "F---ing Smilers," she says, definitively. "But you have the freedom to write your own [title]." When asked if the F-bomb was ever in strong consideration for the actual title, Mann admits that she "thought about it for two seconds, then I thought, I'm not setting out to be some kind of rebel. You know, 'F--- you, Wal-Mart!'"