Mandy Moore

When Mandy Moore began her career amid the late-’90s teen-pop boom that launched Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, there were many early signs that the young singer and actor would carve out a trail that was uniquely her own. Born in 1984 in New Hampshire, Moore was 14 when she signed her first record deal; soon afterward, she started spending school breaks touring with Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. While early hits like 2000’s “I Wanna Be With You” boasted the sunny, bubblegum sensibility she shared with many of her peers, Moore was already reaching for something new on her 2001 self-titled third album, a confident set that expanded her palette to include hip-hop and techno production as well as thoughtful acoustic pop. On 2003’s Coverage, Moore showed more of her true colours as a music fan by covering songs by XTC, Blondie and Joni Mitchell. A few years later, the thoughtful Americana-tinged pop of 2007’s Wild Hope showed off Moore’s songwriting skills. And even though Moore’s success in movies like Tangled and the TV drama This Is Us led to long gaps in between her musical releases, she made the most of her musical partnership with Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith—whom she married in 2018—on 2020’s Silver Landings, an appealing collection of rootsy, ‘70s-style folk-rock songs that feel perfectly suited to Moore’s warm, engaging voice and her candour as a lyricist.