Oh, Manchester, So Much To Answer For

Oh, WOW... I can't believe how much I'm gushing over this, but Paul's favorite teen-pop starlet (who's legal now, btw), Mandy Moore, looks to have a cracker of an album in Coverage (due in September). Clips of every song on the album are now up on her site, and by and large, they're really superb - the work of an artist throwing off the chains which previously binded her and making her own way through the morass that is the popworld right about now. The clips of "Help Me" and "The Whole of the Moon" in particular - I'm shocked and awed. And her song selection is rather impressive (I could've done without "Moonshadow," but I'm nitpicking). I'm actually gonna buy this record; it sounds to be that damned good.

[I also want to see her new flick How to Deal, and I don't know why. But hey, she's showing herself to be a good actress-slash-ingenue, it costars Allison Janney, and actually looks like an intelligently-made teen-skewing film.]

Addendum: If you go to the "media" section of Mandy's site, you can watch the electronic press kit (EPK) about Coverage, in which among other things she talks about how much she wants the masses, as it were, to make the acquaintance of Joan Armatrading's "Drop the Pilot" (which, considering there's a video shot, may well be the first single - and Mandy's take on it is excellent). Very impressive. Paul, I'm sold.