Anderson met Aimee Mann in 1996 when he asked her husband, Michael Penn, to write the score and songs for his film, Hard Eight. Mann had songs on soundtracks before but never "in such an integral way", she said in an interview.[18] She gave Anderson rough mixes of songs and found that they both wrote about the same kinds of characters.[18] He encouraged her to write songs for the film by sending her a copy of the script.[7] Anderson said that "Simon and Garfunkel is to The Graduate as Aimee Mann is to Magnolia".[26]
Two songs were written expressly for the film: "You Do", which was based on a character later cut from the film, and "Save Me", which closes the film;[10] the latter was nominated in the 2000 Academy Awards and Golden Globes and in the 2001 Grammys. Most of the remaining seven Mann songs were demos and works in progress; "Wise Up", which is at the center of a sequence in which all of the characters sing the song,[6] was originally written for the 1996 film Jerry Maguire. At the time, Mann's record label had refused to release her songs on an album.[10] The song that plays at the opening of the film is Mann's cover of "One" by Harry Nilsson. Mann's track "Momentum" is used as the loud playing music in Claudia's apartment scene when Officer Jim arrives and was also featured in the trailer for the film.
The soundtrack album, released in December 1999 on Reprise Records, features the Mann songs, as well as a section of Jon Brion's score and tracks by Supertramp and Gabrielle that were used in the film. Reprise released a full score album in March 2000.
