.TheMandyMoore on her best music, her most cringeworthy music, and which boy band was better to tour with: NSYNC or the Backstreet Boys
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for amfAR Over the span of just two weeks in May, Mandy Moore released her seventh studio album, In Real Life, and said good-bye to her long-running family weepie This Is Us. “It’s a real mixture of feelings,” she says over Zoom, describing the waves of excitement and sadness that have come in the aftermath of these career milestones. “I’m trying to stay present and acknowledge and appreciate all of it.
Song you’re most excited to play on tour It’s always fun to play “Candy.” People are excited to hear it, but it’s a new version: a little bluesier and obviously a bit more organic because there are no synthesizers and drum machines and whatnot. Anything from a Walk to Remember is always sweet. Those are songs that might feel really dated to me, but a whole new life is born when you play them with the band. I’m excited to take lots of stuff from the past and put a slightly new spin on it.
We filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, so it was kind of like a sleepaway camp. I turned 17 on the movie, and I felt like I was sort of starting to come into my own as a pseudo-adult. All of it was such a pivotal experience for me. Honestly, I’ve never felt that way again until This Is Us, which just goes to show there are very few experiences that just check all of those boxes in this crazy life of being an artist.
Best chimpanzees-related memory from the “Crush” music video I remember that obviously being my favorite part of the video. [Laughs.] But they were written in the treatment. It was just, like, entirely random. I mean, let’s remember this was the late ’90s, early 2000s, where you just did crazy things in music videos because that was the way to get people to vote for it on TRL.