Teen Moore bursts into bubble gum pop scene

The Washington Post

The boys with pimples and the girls with braces are hanging around the hallways of MTV, hoping they'll see Mandy. They are shy. They feel unworthy. She is a goddess. Who just blew in from L.A. to host "TRL'' - "Total Request Live,'' where her totally awesome video is No. 6 on the countdown.

Here she comes in black leather pants and a clingy purple top - her teeth perfectly white, her hair lightened and feathered - standing nearly six feet in platform soles. A willowy girl-woman being fussed over by a coterie of imagemakers and product-placers.

"Hey, guys,'' she greets her fans. She smiles radiantly; they smile back awkwardly. She loves her fans and would love to chat, but - gotta go.

She's flying back to L.A. to work on her next video and then host a show called "Mandy's Mountain.''

She is Amanda Leigh Moore of Orlando, Fla., a lovely piece of bubble gum now being inflated by the teen pop culture machine. As music for suburban kids - including the expertly manufactured sounds of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and 'N Sync - soars in popularity, Mandy Moore is along for the ride.

Four months ago she sang at a charity cook-off in a Washington suburb, before a few dozen people. Most probably had no idea who she was.

Now Mandy has a hit single called "Candy'' and a half-million-selling album, "So Real'' (no irony intended). She is ubiquitous on MTV, which immediately seized upon her as a pretty new face for shows that appeal to the acne cream demographic.

She's on the covers of teen beauty magazines and clothing catalogues. She's the official postergirl of the Wet Seal clothing line, and she pitches a new CD player for Sony.

She just landed a global Neutrogena contract that will put her perfect skin - that lone little mole seems strategic somehow - on thousands of ad pages and billboards. There will be tie-ins and support from her label, Sony's Epic/550 Music, which expects to leverage the exposure into getting a second single up the charts.

"We want to make sure every kid has heard of her,'' said Scott Carter, Sony's senior director of product marketing.

Mandy has two official promotional Web sites. She is the object of debate, affection and ogling on more than 100 other Internet sites - including one that polls its readers on what part of Mandy's body they like best.

She is 15.

In the Viacom Building's cafeteria, Mandy, tray in hand, resembles a gangly sophomore, but her days in the Catholic school lunch line are so over. She left halfway through ninth grade, opting for tutoring so she could pursue her singing career, which has already included tours with multi-platinum acts 'N Sync and the Backstreet Boys.

She started out doing musical theater, then sang at Orlando Magic games, performed at Disney World and acted in commercials. She's had an agent since she was 11.

The stress, the invasion of privacy, the industry sniping that she's "Sony's version of Britney Spears,'' the constant demands on her time - all that can be "overwhelming,'' she admits. "But it comes with the territory.'' And it's all worth it: "I'm so thankful to be doing something like this at my age.''

She realizes there's a force at work. It started building when she signed with the label at 13, and now it can't be stopped.

"All these different types of things are starting to mesh now - all these ways of getting your music out and being seen,'' Mandy said, fidgeting.

"It's like one huge force of, like, publicity. Of people seeing you and hearing you. It's ...''

She pauses, as if to make sure she will say the right thing - which she will, because she's getting to be pro at this. "It's very cool, though. It's cool to be in a world like that now. You know, where you get to try a little bit of everything.''

Mandy wants to be a multi-genre star of stage and screen. She wouldn't mind being huge like Janet Jackson and Bette Midler and Madonna, who are among her heroes. Especially Madonna.

Part of what created the Material Girl was blatant sexuality - the same carnal trajectory that is propelling bleached-blond bombshells Spears and Aguilera to fame - but Mandy said she won't play that game. She doesn't like to show her midriff, she said. "I don't want to wear anything ... where I look like I'm 20 or 21.''

On one cover of the new teenStyle magazine, Mandy wears a cropped T-shirt with "Candy'' spelled out in red sequins across her chest. Her midriff is showing.

She opposes breast implants: "I would never have cosmetic surgery,'' she told teen publication Jump after it was reported that Spears had a boob job at 17. "Why rearrange yourself just to get attention or make other people happier?''

Her album doesn't lack for sexual subtext. The first words on her single are a breathy "Give it to me.'' Then she sings: "Body's in withdrawal every time you take it away. Can't you hear me callin', begging you to come out and play?''

She didn't pen the lyrics, of course. The producers and the writers interviewed her for ideas.

"Some of it is my life,'' she explained. "Some of it I haven't experienced. But I was really careful to make sure that everything I was singing about is believable for a 15-year-old, you know?'' She wanted to keep it real.

A FedEx man named Victor Cade discovered Mandy. A part-time talent scout, he noticed a bony 13-year-old cutting jingles in a small Orlando recording studio. Her singing voice was brightly polished. He also knew she'd be a looker.

"It's that model look, which I recognized when I first saw her,'' Cade recalled proudly. "I thought, 'This girl is going to beautiful when she grows, and she is growing fast.'

"She was groomed to be a star - she was well groomed by her parents,'' he added.

He pushed tapes and pictures on his friend Dave McPherson, who signed the Backstreet Boys in 1993. Now an Epic senior vice president, McPherson flew to Orlando to hear Mandy sing. He looked deeply into her hazel eyes.

"She really had a look of a 30-year-old person, in her eyes, even though she was 13,'' he remembered.

"I was concerned about comparisons to Britney,'' McPherson said. But he sensed Mandy could handle what he calls this "treacherous'' business.

And Cade was absolutely right. "She just blossomed during the recording process into this stunning 5-foot-10 model woman that looked like she just walked out of the pages of Vogue magazine,'' McPherson said. "She's developed into a full-fledged personality.''

Mandy is in front of a boisterous studio audience starting the day's "Total Request Live'' countdown. The show, which airs at 3:30 p.m., a prime after-school viewing slot, allows callers and e-mailers to break in with comments as the videos unspool.

The videos tend toward T&A and guys in their underwear. Great eye candy for the multi-tasking generation.

The unblemished face of a pretty teen singer fills the oversize monitor. She's got blond hair with just a hint of dark roots. It's ...

"... Jessica Simpson, who returns to the countdown with 'I Wanna Love You Forever,' '' Mandy reads from the cue cards as a girl who might be her doppelganger shimmies on the screen. Jessica is 18, another rising star in hip-huggers and a crop top.

The new bubble gum pretty much sounds all the same, chewing over eternal teen themes - Is it a crush? Does he really love me? - but no matter. The market is so huge - more than 30 million American kids between 12 and 19 who collectively spend $140 billion a year - that to keep up with the demand, labels are snapping up younger and younger acts. Especially girls.

Industry officials see them as a wholesome alternative to the bump and grind of hip-hop and the screeching rebellion of metal-punk. But they're also coveted because they appeal to other girls - who spend more than boys on music, not to mention cosmetics and clothing.

"Everything people are trying to sell right now has to have an element of entertainment attached to it,'' said Lori Lambert, Epic's vice president for strategic marketing and development. "It's about a big vision. It's making kids feel like that person, that product, that service - that feels like me, that sounds like me, that looks like me.'' In November, Mandy Moore cried the first time she saw her video on MTV, the network she'd watched with utter devotion since she was 12.

There she was lip-syncing "Candy,'' driving around with gal pals in a new Beetle.

Of course, those were actors. Her real friends were in summer camp. Actually, she wasn't driving - not old enough. The car was towed around.

"It's just like doing a commercial,'' she said, "except, like, I was the product. Everyone was working for my benefit.''

She doesn't have a boyfriend. It's too hard, being on the road all the time, to maintain a relationship, she said. Also, people gossip.

But she knows the right guy will come along and hopes that someday she'll get asked to the prom. "If anybody at my school remembers who I am!'' She has a sunny, self-deprecating laugh.

She just can't wait until April 10, her birthday. She displays her new learner's permit, with an impossibly glamorous DMV photo. "I'm ready to turn 16 -and drive!''

Courtesy of the Washington Post

The Mandy Moore marketing machine moves into a store or mall near you.