by Moe Zilla

Created on: July 04, 2008   Last Updated: July 05, 2008

It's the worst Fourth of July song ever - and one of the saddest by Aimee Mann.

"Today's the fourth of July.
Another June has gone by.
And when they light up our town I just think,
what a waste of gunpowder and sky."

Its lyrics hint at some private pain buried in the singer's own past. But the song has a sad history all its own. It had been three years since the breakup of Aimee's first band, "Til Tuesday" - and eight years since she'd sung her only song to enter the Top 40. Aimee recorded "Fourth of July" for her first solo album in 1993 - but after the album was finished, she discovered that her record label was in the process of collapsing. Unable to give the album a full promotion, it lingered on the shelves, a collection of heartfelt ballads that were never heard

Ironically, the title of the album was: "Whatever."

The album held Mann's memories of her early days as a singer, and a love song to a much older man named Mr. Harris - all of which failed to find an audience at a crucial moment in the singer's career. It's one more reason for Mann to sound like a lonely voice singing in the dark on "Fourth of July". The tune meanders slowly over hesitant acoustic guitar chords, eventually joined by a solitary note on a synthesizer.

"So that's today's memory lane
with all the pathos and pain.
Another chapter in a book where the chapters are endless
And they're always the same."

Mann was just 33, but her career became legendary for her ongoing struggles within the music industry. Her next label refused to release her album "Bachelor No. 2," and eventually Mann had to pay them "six figures" to buy back the rights to her recordings. She later achieved successful sales online, and over the next decade she blazed a new career for herself as fully independent artist.

But her ongoing struggles seem to haunt the lyrics of her songs - along with personal and professional relationships that were hopelessly entwined. After two slow verses, "Fourth of July" suddenly rises into a bittersweet hypothetical - a what-if

Oh, baby, I wonder if when you are older - someday.
You'll wake up and say, "My god, I should have told her."
What would it take?
"But now here I am and the world's gotten colder
And she's got the river down which I sold her."

Mann repeats the line as the song ends - imagining a day when the pain she's experienced may actually, finally register on the conscience of the man who's hurt her.

"And she's got the river down which I sold her."

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