By Théoden Janes
The Charlotte Observer
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) We were first introduced to the uber talented Mandy Moore through her music as a teen pop sensation. Now, the 35 year old award winning actress is going back into her roots with a new music tour in the works.
The Charlotte Observer
Mandy Moore picks up the phone and, upon being asked what she’s up to, announces she is at the car wash, and that she’s spending Presidents Day running around L.A. doing errands during a day off from work.
When the person on the other end of the line points out that talking to a journalist seems awfully work-related, she laughs.
“This doesn’t really count,” Moore says of the phone interview. “I’m not in old-age prosthetics or anything. So to me, that’s a win.”
It’s true. It could be worse. This conversation will be over in 15 minutes, and she can talk while getting her car washed. But the painstaking process used to turn the 35-year-old actress into a character roughly twice as old (that being the present-day version of Rebecca Pearson, on NBC’s time-hopping dramatic series “This Is Us”) requires her to be chained to a chair for three hours in the hair-and-makeup trailer to apply some of those old-age prosthetics.
In just a few weeks, production will wrap on the fourth season of “This Is Us,” for which Moore in past seasons has garnered Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations for her performance. Then, a few weeks after that, she’ll put on a different hat, one she hasn’t worn in more than a decade.
That’s the hat of a touring musician.
Although Moore has recorded a song here and there for the show over the years (the ’80s and ’90s versions of her character is shown periodically trying to embark on a singing career), the real-life former teen pop star from long ago hasn’t put out an album since 2009, when she was just 25 years old.
Since then, she’s gone through a divorce, become a bona fide TV star, and gotten married a second time, to Taylor Goldsmith, frontman for the folk-rock band Dawes.
So what finally lured her back into the music business after all this time?
What was the impetus for the collection of deeply personal songs, such as “Fifteen,” which reflects thoughtfully on her early music career as a “pop princess”, that populate her forthcoming seventh album “Silver Linings,” due March 6?
Here’s our recent conversation with her, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: In a sense, even though you’ve technically been on this long hiatus from the music business, for the past couple of years, you’ve gotten multiple chances to perform music on “This Is Us.” Would you say that, on some level, those opportunities helped to sort of rekindle your desire to get back into the studio?
A: Yeah, I can’t discount that, by any means. I think that definitely was a factor. And part of it was the fact that I watched my husband for the last year write music and tour and perform, and this kind of weird jealousy seethed in me. Like, “I want to do that, I miss that, I know how to do that, too!” (Laughs.)
And, really, just coming to the realization that if I wanted to do music as much as I knew I did, and as much as I claimed to, it all started with me. I couldn’t lean on the excuse of, “Well, I don’t have a record label, and I don’t have a music manager, and I don’t have all the machinery required to be a music artist anymore.” That couldn’t really be my excuse anymore. It starts with the music.
So once I decided, “I’m gonna do this, and I’m gonna do this now,” getting on the road was the priority. Making this record was a means to being able to tour again. Because that’s really what I’ve missed, is performing live, and being on stage with a band. That was my line of thinking.
So we just jumped in. I jumped in with Mike (Viola, a longtime collaborator of hers) and Taylor (her husband), because they’re quite literally like my family, and I knew I’d be safe. I also have the utmost respect for them as songwriters and as musicians and performers.
And at the beginning I was like, “Well, if we do this together, let’s just start with a song.” And then a song turned into, “OK, well, maybe we do an EP.” And then it eventually was like, “OK, I think this is a full record.” (Laughs.) But the key was not putting that expectation out there, and not putting that pressure on myself for it to be something that it didn’t necessarily have to be. It was like, “Let’s slowly ease my way back into this and see what feels most comfortable and most authentic.”
Q: Of the songs that are on the album, how old is the oldest one, in terms of when you wrote the song?
A: “When I Wasn’t Watching” was kind of the first one. That was back in 2016. But it was a different iteration of the song, and it was just Taylor and Jason (Boesel, formerly of indie-rock band Rilo Kiley) and I messing around; we wrote the song.
Then while we were in the midst of writing the record, I was going through voice memos on my phone, and I was like, “Oh! Taylor! Do you remember this song?” And he’s like, “Oh, yeah! Play that for Mike!” We played it, and Mike was like, “I love that!” But we sort of re-jiggered the chorus. So I’d say it was, in actuality, probably the fourth or fifth song, in terms of how it fell in the writing process for the album. The very first song, technically, was “Forgiveness.” That’s sort of what set us down this path of, “OK, yeah, this is a record. This isn’t just a song, or an EP.”
Q: Did you say voice memo? Like, on your phone?
A: A voice memo, yeah. That’s where ideas go. And Notes is for all my lyrical stuff. So yeah, I’m just using technology that’s always gonna be in my pocket.
Q: And could that inspiration strike you anywhere? Even at a place like the car wash?
A: It could! Absolutely. I think sometimes, for me, when I’m in the right frame of mind, lyrically things start to jump out at me. Someone will say a phrase, or I’ll see a word written on the side of a truck or something, and that will stir something in me. Even at the car wash.
A return to touring
Q: So you were talking about Taylor, and about working with him on the album. This might be a stupid question, but will he be out on tour with you as part of the band?
A: He will! He’ll be on stage, yeah. This is gonna be the most amount of time consecutively that we’ve ever spent with each other. I’m very excited about it. The idea of us being able to be together, and sharing this experience, and having written this whole record together, it’s immensely special. And kind of once in a lifetime.
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Like, who knows?
Dawes is busy, and they’re always on the road and always making records and stuff. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tour like this with him again in this sort of capacity. So I’m really just owning it, and really gonna savor every single second.
Q: You also mentioned that you felt kind of jealous when he was on tour. Were you with him?
A: Yes, I would pop out and see them on the road all the time. I remember when we first started dating, I probably followed them around for a week, and I just thought, “Oh my God!” Because they are such an incredible live band, and Taylor has so much fun on the road and all of that. I could just see the enthusiasm and excitement, and I was like, “I want to do that! I know how to do that!”
Q: Going back to “This Is Us,” and the singing opportunities you got while shooting. Obviously performing for a camera with a crew there and everything is different, but can you talk a little bit more about how that made you feel? Was it nostalgia?
A: I think there was a ton of nostalgia going into the studio to record them. A lot of those songs, it was just me lip-syncing to them when we were actually filming the scene. But recording them, being back in a studio and with a band and in front of a microphone, I was like, “Whoa, it’s been a minute!” I mean, getting my feet wet like that again definitely ignited that feeling of, “Oh! I do know how to do this, and I do really miss it, and it feels good and it feels natural. I’ve got to find my way back here somehow, because this is just ridiculous at this point.”
Q: In terms of the show, one of the biggest things that’s changed since the last time you were on tour, for fans, too, is the fact that you’re now this big television star on an iconic series. And some people don’t really know, or won’t really know, any of your music, but they love you on “This Is Us,” so they might want to buy tickets for the show just for a chance to be in a room with you. Is that something you think about?
A: Yeah, for sure. I recognize that, in my career, I’ve had this good fortune of it not being limited to just music, or just acting. And the fact that I’ve been doing this for 20 years, I also recognize that there are gonna be plenty of people, in a way, who feel like they’ve kind of grown up with me, or like we’ve grown up together. And, like you mentioned, there’ll be people in the room who are totally unaware of any of my musical past, and are just there because of “This Is Us.” That is fine.
In fact, I think I want this show to feel like a rock show at certain points, but then I also want to be able to break it down and sit on a couch, or sit on a chair, and feel like I’m inviting people into my living room, in a way, and bringing them into the fold. To be able to talk about what it’s like working on the show, and what it’s like to make this record after a decade of not making music and touring after almost 13 years.
I want it to feel like, I mean, not totally like “VH1 Storytellers,” but maybe a little bit? Of just talking about this music, but also talking about my life and this crazy world that I’ve kind of lived in for the last 20 years, in a very conversational way.
So I hope that people leave the show feeling like, “Wow, we heard some incredible music. Some of it was older, some of it I knew, and some of it I didn’t know, but I feel like I’m walking away knowing a lot more about who Mandy is.” That’s important to me, because I know I’m not just my music. I realize that people are gonna be coming there for a whole wealth of reasons, and I want to honor that.
Mandy Moore’s music evolution
Q: How much of a connection do you still feel to your older music? I read that last month at your residency at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles you did (1999 hit) “Candy” for an encore. What was that like to sing that song live again, all these years later?
A: I mean, playing it with this band, with Dawes and Viola, like, I’ll play anything with them. (Laughs.) They can make anything sound good. But I think I apologized for too long about my music of the past, because I was embarrassed. I had no creative control, and I didn’t feel this sense of ownership over anything. With time and with distance, I’ve come to realize that there’s no reason to begrudge it.
I was denigrating people’s choices. There are plenty of people that have a nostalgic connection to “Candy,” and that first record and lots of my older music, and it’s not fair for me to just say, “That song is terrible. Let me refund you for that music.” (Laughs.)
Because it was part of their childhood, and I respect that. Who am I to say that it’s good or bad? I’m able to have my own tastes, but over time, I’ve really reflected back, and I’m like, “That little 15-year-old Mandy had no idea what she was in store for, and what was in store for her.” I was doing my very best, and it’s part of why I’m still here.
So I love that girl, and I love those records. We’ll dig in a little deeper and see what makes sense with the band, but I’m definitely gonna be playing some older stuff, and I hope people will leave satisfied. I mean, I get that people are coming to the show who want to hear “Candy” and “I Wanna Be With You.” I want to do that stuff, too, because some of those songs, now, I’m like, “Yeah! They’re good songs!” And then some of them are not so great, but we won’t play those. (Laughs.)
Q: Would you consider playing a song like “Invisible Ink” (an original song, co-written by her and her husband, that she performed as Rebecca Pearson for “This Is Us” in 2018)?
A: Yes! We want to. We’ve also been talking about doing “Willin’,” the Little Feat/Linda Ronstadt song (another that Mandy Moore/Rebecca Pearson performed on the show). It’d be fun to find a couple songs that make sense that are tied to the show. And I feel like that’ll be an easy way to sort of transition into talking about the show as well, and what that has brought into my life. But yeah, absolutely, “Invisible Ink” should be part of the setlist. I mean, I’ll have Taylor there. We’ve gotta do it.
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