Released 1999 Length 4:35 Writer(s) Aimee Mann | Genre Contemporary folk Label Reprise Composer(s) Aimee Mann | |
Save Me is a song written and performed by Aimee Mann for use in the film Magnolia. It appears on the Magnolia soundtrack, which was released on December 7, 1999. The song also appears on the European edition of the album Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo (2000), as well as the 2007 compilation album Acoustic 07.
In 1999 "Save Me" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song, which it lost to "You'll Be in My Heart" from the Disney movie Tarzan. By way of introduction to a live performance, Mann has referred to "Save Me" as "the song that lost an Oscar to Phil Collins and his cartoon monkey love song." Furthermore, Mann has occasionally dedicated her song to Collins in several different venues, albeit in jest.
It is Mann's best-known song as a solo artist, having also been nominated for a 2001 Grammy award as Best Pop Female Vocal (she lost to Macy Gray's "I Try").
The music video, shot during the filming of Magnolia, was directed by the film's director, Paul Thomas Anderson, and uses many of the film's actors, including Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom Cruise, William H. Macy, and John C. Reilly. The video inserts Mann into various scenes from the film as she performs the song. Unlike many such music videos, the "Save Me" video used no digital manipulation; the scenes were shot at the end of filming days with Mann and actors who were asked to stay in place.
Besides Magnolia, the song has also been featured in episodes of the TV series Cold Case, Portlandia, Grace and Frankie, and HaShminiya, and the films The Jane Austen Book Club and The Edge of Seventeen.