Berklee College of Music alumna Aimee Mann returns to Boston to rock the Berklee Performance Center on Saturday, November 3^rd at 8:00 p.m. Mann is a singer/songwriter, who has established herself as the master of the cerebral rock ballad. Here’s a little back story on the admirable rocker chick.

During the ‘80s, Mann led the post-new wave pop group ‘Til Tuesday. After releasing three albums with the group, Mann left in order to embark on her career as a solo artist. She released her debut solo album Whatever, which received uniformly positive reviews, in the summer of 1993. She has since continued to be consistently at the forefront of contemporary songwriters. The close of the millennium brought her greatest success to date, the simultaneous releases of her album Bachelor No. 2 and the soundtrack to the film Magnolia, which garnered nominations for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and three Grammys. After a decade in which her music often took a backseat to corporate mergers and contractual obligations, the message was clear: Aimee Mann is here to stay.

Mann says that her latest release, Charmer, is as fine a chronicle of the human comedy as popular music has produced. The whole album was written with the theme that charm is a continuum that goes all the way from people who can talk others out of anything to people who are manipulative to people who are almost a little sinister. The album is a little reminiscent of the Cars, Blondie, and Split Enz.

With the track record that Aimee Mann has as a writer and musician, along with my admiration for her as a songwriter, this is definitely on my list of shows-not-to-miss this fall – and it should be on yours too!

Hope to see you there!