Queens of the Summer Hotel by Aimee Mann

Queens of the Summer Hotel, Aimee Mann's tenth studio album, came out on November 5, 2021 on her own SuperEgo Records, and it started life as something else entirely. In 2018 Mann was commissioned to write songs for a stage musical based on Susanna Kaysen's 1993 memoir Girl, Interrupted, the story of Kaysen's time in McLean Hospital. When the COVID-19 pandemic put the show on ice, she put the songs out herself.

Paul Bryan produced, and the setting is chamber music rather than rock band: piano, strings and woodwinds, hushed and deliberate, a frame that suits songs about a young woman taking stock of her own mind behind locked doors. The title borrows from an Anne Sexton poem, one that grew out of the poet's own stay at McLean. Reviews were warm, landing at 77 out of 100 on Metacritic, with critics singling out the reflective arrangements and Mann's singing, and the musical itself finally reached New York City in 2026.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.