EXTRA! Mandy Moore

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Learn more@edwardjones.com hi, I'm Jane Pauley and this is our Sunday morning extra cath featuring a memorable story from our latest show all Mandy Moore is a singer and actress is riding high days after a number of years of ups and downs. She's in conversation with Luke Burbank. You're pretty precocious kid when it came to performing stuff and you were talking your parents into into driving places and letting you all dancing national anthems of what were far more precocious and I can't and I am now for share through the fearlessness that comes along with being a young person not knowing the stake that world yet. I was really like you to go to school that had music and drama program and every year the sixth-graders put on big production, like the touring auditorium where all the touring Broadway shows came through and the I remember being six years old and seeing Oklahoma and I've never seen a musical bullfight never seen a play. I remember the girl who was playing Lori singing. Oh what a beautiful morning and I was memorized and I remember turning around in my seat and watching the audience. He was equally mesmerized by her and thinking only people feel that way.

Like that's my first time recalling like making that connection between like oh being on stage. Opening your mouth singing like that can have that sort of effect on people and from then on I would like to run around the house singing the little mermaid singing. Oh what a beautiful morning asking my parents if I sounded as good at this stage and that could have led me into wanting to do theater and by the time it was about eight or nine the Orlando Sentinel used to have this audition hotline that every Friday would call before school it would give you like all of the auditions like those at the local community theaters around town for the coming week and I would sort of like right now with my pencil and paper before school like what one sounded appealing.

What ones were looking for children my age, you are essentially like representing yourself as a like what eight-year-old kid in Orlando is essentially my own agent at age 8 and my parents were kind enough to drive me all across town to the various different editions with a very separate part of my life like musical theater nerd was not something I brought to school. I wanted to and I sort of transitioned into doing make local commercials and stuff and all of that felt like I was living dual lives in a way because he was always concerned with people thinking that I was conceited.

Didn't I was really shy kid.

I don't think I stood out like in school with my friends and stuff I said I was just very plain in the middle and I just didn't want to bring extra attention against myself which is also you have this desire to be on stage somebody who is like teaching at some I don't know drummer music camp. We went to I think was described everywhere. They described as being like you know a talented performer but not somebody who's consciously trying to be the center of attention. I think that's a very apt description probably is still fitting for today. I love what I do I feel like I'm sort of electrified coming on stage or being in front of the camera when liking of the red light is on but beyond that I'm very happy to assertive, quiet and content and happy to not be the center of attention.

I think that's called a site-specific extrovert site-specific extrovert. I'm I'm getting that from now on. I love that you you you you turn it on when you turn on. You don't want that to be like 24 I felt exhausting to me. So how did you become like Orlando's number one national anthem singer.

I don't know if I was a national anthem singer might have been like self-described that way I was a little kid and we read in Orlando Magic game and I remember seeing a girl my age commencing anthem, and again it was this epiphany can be like I didn't know that was a possibility didn't know you could sing the national team like adults do it, so I begged my parents to get me a little pitch pipe and they recorded me and then my mom so the story goes hand-delivered disliking a VHS cassette of me singing the national anthem with fresh baked cookies and I think that's what like solidified everything for me. I got the gig I got to sing the national anthem at the Orlando Magic game and then possibly every other sports team that played in the arena there.

The roller hockey team. The arena football team. The ice hockey team.

I ended up singing for all of them. I just did the national anthem circuit at the arena. Would you get nervous before this so nervous because the entire octave challenging song to sing and I was always petrified that I was forget the lyrics in outpatient schemas. This horror stories of people that they forget the lyrics so that was always what I was most concerned with one thing else or just a one time an interview was that a lot of the stuff you did when you were younger, even when you ended up you know with a major label and stuff you were sort of more confident about it then. Then you would be now as a kid. Leaders like a naturally sort of confident kid or you just didn't know what you didn't know, it's funny to think back to that chapter of my life as a young person I was totally fearless. I would lock on stage. Opening up for the Backstreet Boys in front of 20,000 screaming girls with glow sticks and not think anything of it excited me sort of supercharged about what I knew was about to experience, but not nerve this host a show on MTV do TRL live out in Times Square.

All of that stuff. I remember just the excitement bubbling up but never feeling nervous the way that I feel nervous which is pretty much all the time. Wracked with anxiety.

But, you know, in the 35-year-old woman. It's like I understand what the stakes are. If you mess up so I wish I could like Back into my youth and steal some of that confidence. So let's also explain to me how this FedEx employee played a role in inured actually getting like a record deal so I was singing the national and ice hockey get a roller roller derby is one that is and was approached as I was walking off the ice to my dad sitting in the penalty box by these two guys.

He served called us over and said hey have you ever had any experience in recording studio work. Writers and producers and would love to recording demo with you, which in hindsight is probably the she is thing to grown men could say to 14-year-old, but might we also have had this like conference and talked about it and I said I've never been in the studio that something I dreamt about like sure, absolutely. So I ended up going to the recording studio using my own money to like pay for a time in the studio and these guys had original songs that I recorded and a guy who was delivering boxes for FedEx heard me saying and see some friend of a friend of a friend of a friend up the chain, who is the head of ANR at epic records and they can manage to send this unfinished demo off to the sky and he heard something he liked and flew down to Orlando in my favorite thing about that whole experience was. I just started my freshman year of high school and I had this big meeting with this like ANR executive from New York and we we like they had booked up the studio space for me to meet with him and I was supposed to sing something lie for him, which I chose a song called happily ever after. From a musical called once upon a mattress is getting less sketchy if sketchy. I sing a song for him and I remember like looking at my watch, thinking I have to get out here in time to make money homecoming football game like that's where my brain was think anything this meeting was cool but in my brain. It was like what is this can amount to like this guy flew down from New York to hear me saying that I just was so much more focused on being a regular 15 hold that wanted to go to the football game than he did sign you and then you moved to New York and you or I stop when I school like your life really changed my life changed dramatically. I laughed during the holiday break.

That year and started making my record in New York and in Orlando where he lived. In January and I June. I was out in LA made the music video for my first single candy and flew immediately. The next day to Virginia Beach Virginia where I started and centaur so and I was that was just like January to June was a very pivotal time in my life because I was making the record, but also things would never be the same after that. You think you were aware of that at the time, you stand the gravity of what was actually happening to now I had no idea the gravity of the situation. I knew that my parents were wearing. I mean my dad is an airline captain my mom is a stay-at-home mom and we all sort of like jumped into this experience to gather but nobody knew what was going on. I mean thankfully like they understood like the industry.

We don't want to manage you anything will just be mom and dad and I had at least one of them always by my side like traveling around at that age, but I think I could sense there hesitation and trepidation about the unknown, but I was just so excited about like every little thing that happened you know is like I knew something that was presented that I got to record and shoot a first explosion at all that I was a 15-year-old girl like every single little thing was just the coolest experience for me. You are are usually really successful with the stuff you want, like Britney Spears successful Lucky so lucky that often. I never achieved the degree of success that some of my contemporaries did and it allowed me so much more freedom to a continued well to find the music that I wanted to do and have a hand in writing and creating in because there wasn't that sort of expectation like you to deliver more hits also allowed me to branch off into the acting world into film and television in a way that because I wasn't as famous. I didn't have as much notoriety people could sort of let me disappear into a part of it. More than some of my contemporaries which you know is I consider myself really lucky was a point where you started to think oh I'm actually an actor who sings sure. I became aware. After a while of that. That was probably the perception out in the world of me still probably to this day, which is fine again. I have sort of leaned into the idea that it allows me to continue making the kind of music that I want to make because there is nothing sort of expectation like I made a pop record in the way I wanted to like my definition of pop music and maybe that wouldn't be the case if I had you know I ton of musical success and I was a musician who acted so at this point because of this is us a lot of the films you've done.

There is a big part of the publishing that really knows you from your acting chair, but you're saying that internally you identify as a singer who just doing this acting thing to self identify as a singer identifies a singer, musician, first for sure if somebody told me I had to make the choice, I love both. I feel creatively fulfilled very differently by doing both, and I think that's why I've really had this yearning for music for the last decade because it hasn't been a part of my life and there's just been this completely unfulfilled on untapped side of me that now when you know celebrating, acknowledging, what are you hoping that your music is doing what your goals. I hope that my music helps people, changes their mood lifts their spirits in assessment on a better course for the day. Now I hope they're able to read into it and maybe draw some comparisons to their own life and find some catharsis in everything that sort of wet music serves for me for all of us. You know, but definitely definitely just finding that connection. I hope people listen to the lyrics and feel like I've been in that situation before in the okay someone else's singing, and they clearly made out the other side, and many good did you actually offer to refund people to purchase your first record. He did say that I was very vocal about that early. I like that record actually coming down to the interview and I think it's a perfectly serviceable pop records (that is a very apt description. It is a serviceable pop record from that era mean I joke and I joked, then otherwise probably more serious about it years ago.

I think you know any any reflection back on who you are what you did when your teenager is you've gotten some distance from it.

Especially like not too far after not making out five or six years away. Unlike who was that she was making.

I think I felt defensive because I didn't have a lot of creative control, like guys, if you think that means not was my choice. Like I'm really sorry about that.

If I could I give you your money back, but again now that I have 20 years distance from it that negating someone's connection with that, someone's nostalgia, they're able to think back to when they were teenager to that record and there's nothing wrong with that and who might say it and I think that it come with like the wisdom of an clarity that comes along with getting older and realizing in the been a big part of this record for me to is that that idea of self reflection. I love that girl not to get emotional by like that girl is cheese and still she's the reason I'm here talking to you like I have so much affection and respect for her at 15 navigating across easy adult world. The way that I was able to like I so I am able to look back now with affection for that music and smiling go meeting up for me but I I don't want to slander it for other people. At this point if this were a therapy session. So your attending yourself positive, very shrill, yet from what I've read. Also heard you talk about a little bit was the marriage that your room yes to Ryan Adams and in the way that you felt that that really stalled your kind of musical progression of momentum when it would you feel happened there like I was at a point in my life where I was the most comfortable making myself this the least priority and I made myself a small as possible in order to make somebody else comfortable and one sister to remove myself from that situation and realized that that was never going to serve me or be healthy and ultimately give me life that I knew I deserved. I sings changed exponentially.

The world just opened back up again took some time it took a lot of time and a lot of work and a lot of healing a lot of self reflection and making sense of how I found myself in that situation I never find myself in a situation again, but also there was so much to unpack. It really destroyed my relationship to music.

It destroyed emotional. It just destroyed my sense of self.

It destroyed my belief in who I was as a musician is a singer so I think once I remove myself from that and gave myself time to heal from it and realize the strength and the power that I bring to any situation has been doing this now for so long. Once I dropped those bags.

I realize the power that I had and I just haven't looked back into me this record is joyful and at the celebration and it's about momentum forward. I'm so sick of looking in the rearview mirror.

I did so much of that for too much of my life and that I'm just excited now that I feel like this fully realized.

Part of me is when I'm able to show people when it comes to being a musician and it comes being a singer and I just think it's it's so reflected in what I'm doing now so I was asking you to look about how it feels to be back on stage. You see the live band and just being kind of like in that in that space definitely being back on stage definitely feel like I'm working out after having been to the gym and over that I've been dreaming about doing this for so long since I Taylor about being able to go out on the road and play music together. So for the dream to be actualized now is kind of blowing my mind. I go and open up friends. Think of the Backstreet Boys or I do some radio station concert in your playing. What five or six songs like real sense, that's not actually touring, so I still feel like in many ways.

I've never I'm doing something I've never really done before and it's not my day job, so an incredibly vulnerable experience, but because of that, it's like I'm elated when I get off stage. It feels for Heinrich, the adrenaline rush is unlike anything you could possibly experience would you say that the success of the TV show has really allowed you to kind of restart your music career because the music can be something that I think I assume you don't have to pay the bills with the music. This pressure on it like this or the Quiznos. The Quiznos should be no greater than for now.

Basically your first video or an early video they try to do some dancing is not your strong suit was not my strong suits and quickly after that. Like I was aware back on the record label like just saying if you want to move around a little but that's fine, but no choreography. What is your vibe on stage these days around like I feel the freedom to move around.

No choreography other than having people come out and have a good time. Like Woody, hoping comes all of it would make this a success and that's a really good question. Not much about that.

I think I'm excited to be able to stand on the other side of it go.

I've had this dream for the last you know I over a decade of taking my music out of the band and singing music and I'm really proud of and excited to share with people the fact again that I get to do with like my family and has been at my side is more than a dream come true. So I think just the idea of like I want to stay present one appreciate it while it's happening everything you are through with your previous marriage and just your music coming to realize you came out the other side of it Tubbs like us to be intensely how to just reflect back on 35 and I've been doing this since I was keen 20 years of having a career like all the successes all of the failures. Everything in between. There's a lot there's a lot to take stock of and will be emotional. I think for some of those very specific shows being in Chicago. Being a national being here in a hometown show obviously and in LA just the fact that I'm still able to do it and that there still an audience out there. You asked me earlier if I was aware of like what my life was gonna sort of be like as a kid when shot off like a rocket wasn't. But I I had big dreams but like my biggest dream was longevity, which is a weird thing is a young person to be aware is very practical, so I just knew I was like this feeling so much I want to be able to do it for as long as possible. I look to people like that Midler it wasn't Madonna for me was that Midler like I knew she did Broadway sheeted movie she did TV.

She was just family like she kind of did it all and she was a household name on her own terms Barrymore all my goodness, I want to tell you about our new show it's the twos news podcast and in each episode mean a weekly gastric to cover all the quirky find inspiring and informative stories that exist on the wall because well I need it and maybe you do too. From the newest interior design trend RB core to the right and wrong way to wash her armpit also working to get into things that you just kind of won't believe them were not able to do in daytime television. So watch out Drew's news ever you get your podcast. It's your good news on the go