Looking for a way to get out of the hassles of tour, Aimee Mann orders up a robot clone in the music video for “Charmer,” the first single off of Mann’s forthcoming album of the same name. Directed by Tom Scharpling, “Charmer” also features Laura Linney (The Squid And The Whale, The Big C) and John Hodgman.
Mann explained to NPR that, while the video appears to be about the wackiness that ensues when Linney acts as Mann’s robot double, it actually goes deeper than that. She says "Charmer" “[is] about people whose charm can become like a persona that then starts to block the person's real self. I definitely wanted something lighthearted, and [Scharpling's] concept did the perfect job of skirting the line between funny and still acting a bit as a metaphor for the more serious bits that are in the song.”