Mandy Moore – Mandy Moore’s second act
She eventually signed to Sire Records, hoping to at least co-write the tracks on her next album. Though it has become customary for pop singers to receive shared songwriting credit (and royalties) for songs with which they have little involvement, Moore wanted to really write. “It kind of felt like this rebirth, like now I’ve got this clean slate and a completely new opportunity to do the kind of music I wanted to do,” she relates. “I felt like I had something to add to the process.”
Moore and Sire couldn’t agree on potential songwriting partners, or on a musical direction. After a year, they parted ways. “It wasn’t the right fit,” Moore says. “I think they had a niche they wanted filled, and I wasn’t the person to do that. I could have had a record out a year and a half ago that probably would have tanked and gone nowhere, and I wouldn’t have been behind at all. I would’ve written with a bunch of people everyone writes with. Here today, gone tomorrow.
“But it meant too much to me. I was like, I don’t have to make a record. I feel lucky that I’m in the position that I have something else in my life that I have so much fun doing, and that I’ve had more success with than with music. So if I’m gonna take the time out of my life, I wanna do it right, and I wanna do it my way. Because it really doesn’t matter any other way.”
Moore began to slowly and fitfully write the songs that would appear on Wild Hope. In search of potential songwriting partners, she approached Lori McKenna, the suburban-housewife-turned-singer-songwriter who contributed several tracks to Faith Hill’s latest disc, and with whom Moore had recently become obsessed. McKenna knew Moore was an actress, but was vague on the details. Moore wanted to keep it that way. McKenna recalls: “That was one thing she was really clear on — she didn’t want me to listen to her music. She wanted me to stay away from it.”
Moore flew to Massachusetts, where she wound up spending so much time with McKenna’s family that one of McKenna’s young children assumed Moore was a relative. McKenna was impressed. “She has a hell of a voice. She’s a much better singer than she gives herself credit for, because she’s so humble. She’s a hard worker, and she knows what she wants to do. She’s kind of shy, but she has the courage to say what she wants to say. I think it’s really brave what she did. She certainly didn’t have to go this route.”
Moore also reached out to neo-folkie Rachael Yamagata; Deb Talan and Steve Tannen of Los Angeles duo the Weepies; fast-rising singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile; and New York chamber-pop collective Hem (though the latter two pairings didn’t make the album). “Luckily, most of them didn’t know much about me musically. I think that worked to my benefit,” Moore says. “I think the fact that I was reaching out to artists of their ilk made them realize that it was a different kind of pop record.
“I knew that I had something to say, and I wanted to work with people I could learn from and really looked up to. I knew the experience of being in the room with them and seeing their process was only gonna help me for the next record, and for whatever I was gonna do down the line musically….I just wanted to be as much of a sponge as possible.”
The songwriting process went something like this: Moore brought in ideas she had worked on, themes she had whipped up during long periods of reflection, and bits and pieces of things. Eventually, she and her co-writers emerged with a finished song.
Exposing her innermost yearnings to strangers wasn’t as awkward as you would think. “I’m a pretty open book, and I felt pretty comfortable with people right off the bat,” she says.
“To just launch into, like, ‘This is what I said so far, this is what I still want to say and this is what’s going on in my life’ — I loved it. In a way it’s free therapy, and it helps me realize I’m not completely crazy with some of the things I’m thinking or I want to say. The songwriting process has given me clarity on certain situations. It’s taught me a lot about myself, and I don’t know if I’d gotten that if I’d been writing by myself.”
Last fall, after enlisting producer John Alagia, who had worked with Yamagata and John Mayer among others, Moore flew to Woodstock to begin work on the first real record of her life. It would be the first time she was involved in the making of an album from its early demos to its last day. For Moore, who was educated by a tutor once her career took off, Woodstock was high school and college rolled into one.
“I took a lot of time to myself, listening to music and driving around, and embracing the silence, too,” she says. “Sort of hanging out by myself, which I never liked to do before I got up there. I didn’t need anything. I loved waking up in the morning. I found my little breakfast place in Woodstock, and I would go and drink coffee and read the paper. I loved it. It was like getting my independence back.”