Aimee Mann Announces New Album Queens of The Summer Hotel for November 2021 Release, Shares Video for Moving Lead Single “Suicide is Murder”

American singer-songwriter Aimee Mann has announced a new album titled Queens of The Summer Hotel, which is due to be released on November 5 through her very own SuperEgo Records. She accompanied the album’s announcement with the release of lead single “Suicide Is Murder” and it’s music video.

Described as “the unintentional part two” to Mann’s Grammy-winning 2017 album Mental Illness, the new album’s development began in 2018 when Mann was writing songs for the stage adaptation of Girl, Interrupted. Mann related to the source material because of it’s themes of mental illness, inspiring her work which culminated in the music of Queens of The Summer Hotel. “I honestly felt almost possessed when I was writing this record as I’ve never written so fast and intensely,” Mann said while explaining the album’s developmental process. “I found the material very interesting and obviously really personal. I had specific ideas about what I thought the character’s backstory could be and incorporated a lot of shared experiences to flesh out specific characters discussed in the memoir.”

“Suicide Is Murder” is a funereal piano ballad about suicide, comparing it to murder in it’s premeditated nature and the effect it has on the victim’s loved ones. Explaining the song, Mann said, “I started to write this song because I’ve known people who committed suicide and friends who’ve had loved ones die from suicide.” Mann continued, “I think the phrase ‘suicide is murder’ took on a meaning for me as it’s the worst thing to have to deal with in the aftermath. It’s just terrible. Because every person who knows the person who committed suicide will blame themselves in some way for not noticing or stepping in or doing something. They’ll till the end of their days, say, ‘was there something I could have done?’” The songs music video depicts a lonely man who appears haunted by the loss of at least one loved one. 

The new song’s release is Mann’s first since last year, when she released shorter and softer cover of Leonard Cohen’s 1971 song “Avalanche” for the HBO docu-series I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. 

Queens of The Summer Hotel Tracklist: