The Houston Chronicle‘s Michael D. Clark has written an excellent article on Aimee Mann’s career in music.

Here’s an excerpt:

It was 1985, new wave music was hot, and Aimee Mann was briefly poised to be its pin-up girl.

She had the electric bleached-blonde hair, a long, slender frame (perfect for snug alterna-fashions), and a Top 10 radio hit, aptly titled “Voices Carry,” with her band ‘Til Tuesday. That song helped the Boston-based group sell more than 500,000 copies of its debut album, also called Voices Carry. Revered songwriters like Elvis Costello lined up for studio time to work with the 25-year-old Mann.

‘Til Tuesday was on the brink of following in the footsteps of other female-led pop rock superstar acts like the Pretenders, Blondie and the Motels.

But there was just one problem. Mann felt the woman seen singing Voices Carry in a helium-high falsetto every hour on MTV was a stranger. Furthermore, ‘Til Tuesday’s sound ? with its synth-heavy, simple hooks ? was not the music the former Berklee School of Music student wanted to be playing.

“I was so uncomfortable with the ‘Til Tuesday stuff,” says Mann, now touring as a solo artist in support of new concept album The Forgotten Arm. She brings the show to the Verizon Wireless Theater on Sunday. “We were toying with the genre of the day, but it took me a long time to figure what I felt comfortable with and what wanted to do.”

The rest of the article can be read on the Chronicle‘s website.

As the article indicated, Aimee Mann plays in Houston tonight at the Verizon.

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