Prior to the release of his 1989 debut album March, Penn performed the song "This & That" with his band The Pull on a 1987 episode of Saturday Night Live. Before that, he was a member of the Los Angeles band Doll Congress and had appeared as an extra on a few television series, including St. Elsewhere.
March, particularly the first single, "No Myth," brought Penn attention, as well as the 1990 MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. Penn's follow-up albums Free-for-All (1992), Resigned (1997) and MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident (2000) weren't able to match the success of March, although critics praised his songcraft.
Penn met fellow singer-songwriter Aimee Mann in the late 1980s, and during the recording of her album I'm With Stupid (to which Penn contributed vocals), the two struck up a friendship, which blossomed into romance and their 1997 marriage. Together with manager Michael Hausman they formed United Musicians, which is based on the idea of allowing artists to keep copyright ownership of their works and to assist with their promotion and distribution. Penn and Mann live in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. They have no children, but Penn has a son from a previous marriage.
He moved into film scoring after repeated requests from director Paul Thomas Anderson, who had apparently listened to Free-for-All extensively while writing his first feature Hard Eight and wanted Penn to score the film. Penn also scored Anderson's follow-up Boogie Nights (in which he appeared briefly as a recording engineer), The Anniversary Party, Melvin Goes to Dinner and the documentary The Comedians of Comedy.
His fifth album, Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947, was released August 2, 2005, on Mimeograph Records (Penn's own label) and SpinART Records. Penn has said that the album, which may be the first of two parts, is set after World War II and involves "the trauma that a war brings to a person's psychology." [1]
Penn's music "Walter Reed" was used in the fifth episode of House MD's third season, "Fools For Love".
O.K
Michael Penn Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Baby, come back down to the ground
Let me hold you
Let me hold this moment a spell
I can tell
That there's really not a lot of options open
For another kind of aftermath
That you can do to make it come true
Make it perfect, make it O.K.
Light the marquees
Santa Anas twist through the trees
And while the line swings
Putting all your light things with his
Trouble is
That there's really not a lot of options open
For another kind of aftermath
You're hoping that there's something else
That you can do to make it come true
Make it perfect, make it O.K.
And there's really not a lot of options open
For another kind of aftermath
You're hoping that there's something else
That you can do to make it come true
Make it perfect, make it O.K.
The singer in Michael Penn's song "OK" addresses a partner who is experiencing some sort of distress or emotional turbulence. The singer encourages the partner to "come back down to the ground" and seeks to comfort them by holding the moment "a spell." However, the singer acknowledges that there are "not a lot of options open" for a different kind of aftermath, suggesting that whatever has occurred is difficult to undo or fix. Nonetheless, the partner is "hoping that there's something else that [they] can do to make it come true / Make it perfect, make it O.K."
Line by Line Meaning
Baby, calm down
Please relax, don't be upset
Baby, come back down to the ground
Don't get too carried away, be grounded
Let me hold you
Let me comfort you
Let me hold this moment a spell
Let's savor this moment and not rush ahead
I can tell
I understand the situation
That there's really not a lot of options open
We have limited choices
For another kind of aftermath
To deal with the consequences of what happened
You're hoping that there's something else
You want there to be a better solution
That you can do to make it come true
You're searching for a way to make things work out
Make it perfect, make it O.K.
You want everything to be just right and okay
Light the marquees
Illuminate the signs
Santa Anas twist through the trees
The winds are blowing through the trees
And while the line swings
While we ride the ups and downs
Putting all your light things with his
Sharing your belongings with him
Trouble is
The problem is
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
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