Aimee Mann said she won’t be opening for Steely Dan this summer, though “no one is entirely sure why.”
Mann, who initially rose to fame with ‘Til Tuesday, broke the news in a four-panel cartoon on Instagram then followed the drawing with several Twitter replies.
Steve Winwood was initially paired with Steely Dan for these dates but was replaced by Mann and Snarky Puppy in February. Snarky Puppy are still set for shows in May and early June, while Mann was to have taken over on June 21 through July 3.
Mann suggested that she was dropped because “their audience wouldn’t like a female singer-songwriter.” UCR has reached out for comment from Steely Dan’s PR contact.
“As it happens, Steely Dan is the one band that I 100 percent love, with no reservations, so it really sucks,” Mann added. “But you know what? People are allowed to not like you, for whatever reason.”
Steely Dan are touring behind Northeast Corridor, their first live album in 25 years. The LP arrived last September on the same day as Donald Fagen‘s The Nightfly Live. Ticketmaster no longer lists Mann as the tour’s opening act, though a few websites for individual venues have not yet been updated.
“I love Steely Dan,” Mann told Forbes later in 2021, “and to me, Steely Dan has an enormous amount of feeling that I feel like nobody ever gives them credit for. There’s an enormous amount of feeling. The characters are sad, and pathetic, and despairing, and drug addicts, mostly involved in these terrible dead-end relationships. What’s not to like?”
Mann referenced Steely Dan’s famously inscrutable lyrics in a separate tweet about her departure, specifically mentioning “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)” from Can’t Buy a Thrill: “All is forgiven if Donald just tells me what ‘Brooklyn’ is about.”
Legends Who Never Had a No. 1 Single
It’s all the more surprising when you consider the success so many of them had by any other measure.
