This Is Us’ Mandy Moore has opened up about what motivated her return to music.
The singer-turned-actress first shot to fame in the late 1990s, with the release of her 1999 single Candy, which was followed by her debut album So Real.
That was followed up by 2000’s I Wanna Be With You and the self-titled Mandy Moore, which was released in 2001. She released Coverage in 2003, before following that up with Wild Hope in 2007.
Her last album, Amanda Leigh, was released in 2009. In 2019, she released her first original song in more than 10 years, When I Wasn’t Watching.
She explained to Variety that while she had wanted to tour her last album Amanda Leigh 11 years ago, it just “didn’t come to fruition.”
“What’s really motivated me to get back to music for the last decade is how much I love performing live, and making a record as a conduit to getting back on stage. For various reasons, music has come in fits and starts for me over the last decade,” she said.
“I’ve written and not written; I’ve questioned whether music was meant to be part of my next chapter or was behind me. It took being the last five years of being in a relationship with someone like Taylor and having this constant stream of music being this through line that we share in our life.”
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The actress wed Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith in 2018 – and she told the publication that it was their day-to-day life which, in party, sparked her enthusiasm to get back into music.
“We’ll start our day and he’ll have coffee and go right to the piano, and that is nothing short of inspiring, having that constantly in my life and in my ears,” she explained. “I remember early on, when we first started dating, going on the road and watching him play every night, feeling this jealousy burning inside me: I know how to do that. I’ve done that before.”
“And in the last year and a half, ever since Mike (Viola) working at Verve, which was a couple years ago, there’s been the idea of: I have to figure out how to make music again. I really leaned on this idea of like, well, I don’t have a manager; I don’t have a record label anymore. The only way that I’d known how to make music is like with that engine behind me,” Moore continued.
“I really came to the idea that it has to start with the music and has to start with me; I can’t really lean on any excuse anymore. And if I want to do it, I just have to put one foot in front of the other. It came naturally. I knew that if I’m going to make music, I’m making it with Mike and Taylor. And I’m sure I could have put it out by myself, but why not have the machinery of a label like Verve Forecast behind me?”
Mandy Moore’s Silver Landings will be released next month. It features songs that she co-wrote with Goldsmith and her producer, Mike Viola. Both of them will join her band while she undergoes a 26-date tour.
