Firm Music
2007
Wild Hope
About This Album
Since Mandy Moore lacked the hits and sharply defined persona of her immediate teen pop peers, she had the freedom to redefine her image in a way Britney or Jessica didn't. She could ease into adulthood while her onetime colleagues were stuck in a perpetual adolescence, falling out of cars and clothes (often simultaneously), slowly turning into pop culture punch lines instead of pop stars. Moore side-stepped such embarrassment by focusing on work, both as a musician and actress, picking projects that looked so great on paper that it almost didn't matter that the end results never quite lived up to their potential. This was as true for the 2006 silver screen American Idol satire American Dreamz as it was for her 2003 album Coverage, an attempt at covering great pop songwriters that proved Moore's taste, ambition, and smarts. Even if it wasn't necessarily compelling listening, it did provide a template for a mature Mandy Moore and Wild Hope, delivered four years later -- after a parting of ways from Epic, then an unsuccessful stint at Warner that resulted in no albums but led to a contract with EMI -- follows through on much of its promise. In most ways, Wild Hope is Coverage assembled with original tunes: it's a classy, burnished collection of adult pop, often built on acoustics but rarely seeming folky, because it places the emphasis on melody, like most pop music.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10)

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