Aimee Mann: Save Me
[Purchase]
The PT Anderson film Magnolia came out in 1999 and starred many notable actors, including Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore and John C. Reilly. The film explores a number of different characters all going through life crises and introspection. These characters are all connected, one, by all living in the same area, the San Fernando Valley, around Magnolia Ave. and also through life circumstances and coincidences. Another way they all become connected within the movie is with its music. Near the end of the movie all the characters find themselves listening to an Aimee Mann song, all of them have reached rock bottom and all of them are singing along. The song in question isn't the one I post here today only because that song wasn't specifically written for the film.
Mann and Anderson were friends before he started writing the script for the movie, and he got many of his ideas for the film through listening to Aimee's music. Within the liner notes of the soundtrack he states that he heard a line from one of her songs and wrote backwards from it to get the whole movie. In the end, most of the music that appears on the soundtrack was already in the works before the movie, but a few songs were written specifically for the film. One was "Save Me", a melancholy song that Mann wrote about how the film's characters all are in a dark place and looking for a savior of one kind or another. The song beautifully closed the film off, and was nominated for an Academy Award for best song the following year.