Queens of the Summer Hotel

Queens of the Summer Hotel is the tenth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, released on November 5, 2021, by SuperEgo Records.^[1] The album was inspired by Susanna Kaysen's 1993 memoir Girl, Interrupted about the author's experience as a young woman in a psychiatric hospital with borderline personality disorder in the 1960s.^[2] Mann began writing the album after being contracted to write a musical version of memoir (also inspired by the 1999 movie).^[3] The album features classical orchestration, with a strong presence of piano, strings, and woodwinds.^[2]

Mann started work on Queens of the Summer Hotel in 2018, when she was commissioned to write songs for a stage adaptation of Susanna Kaysen's 1993 memoir Girl, Interrupted. The memoir describes Kaysen's time at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.^[4][5] The musical was to be produced by Barbara Broccoli and Frederick Zollo, but was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic.^[6]

Mann spoke to Rolling Stone about the inspiration behind the album's first single, "Suicide is Murder": “I started to write this song because I’ve known people who committed suicide and friends who’ve had loved ones die from suicide. 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?’"^[7]

The album title was inspired by an Anne Sexton poem from her book To Bedlam and Part Way Back which was inspired by her experience in the McLean Hospital, the same hospital the author of Girl, Interrupted spent 18 months.^[8]

Editors at AllMusic rated this album 4 out of 5 stars, with critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine writing that "despite its contemplative nature, Queens of the Summer Hotel looks outward" and "the combination of the airiness of the arrangements and the warmth of Mann's performance is wistfully hopeful, turning Queens of the Summer Hotel into a record that soothes and consoles during moments of uncertainty".^[10] The site also featured this as one of the best albums of 2021.^[13] Kirsten Lambert from the Chicago Reader wrote, "Mann probes the depths of human experience, addressing some grim subject matter—including suicide, self-immolation, and incest." She concluded that the album "isn't a quick (or easy) listen. This one will stay with you for a while."^[1] Alex McLevy of The A.V. Club called it "an unusual (and unusually rewarding) project," writing, "It doesn't have the instant-classic pop of some of her earlier material, but as a more somber, measured collection of music (none of the jangly pop-rock of Charmer to be found here), it's a winner."^[11]

Credits for Queens of the Summer Hotel adapted from Tidal.^[14]

• Paul Bryan – production, arrangement, conduction
• Ryan Freeland – engineering, mixing
• Jens Wortmann – cover collage
• Scott Silva – cover photo
• Ed Sherman – design
• Karen Malluk – production coordination