How To: Become A Famous Pop Singer and Marry Ryan Adams

Into the Gloss has a fun dispatch up from Mandy Moore, where she shares the weird story behind her big break:

It’s a ridiculous story that sounds like a made-for-TV movie: I started by doing musical theater as a kid and I used to sing the National Anthem all the time around Orlando. That was my weird thing; I loved it. I sent an audition tape in to the Orlando Magic in which I was wearing an American flag hair bow — I was really patriotic back in the day. [Laughs] The team picked me to sing, and then it was sort of a domino effect: every other local sports team asked me sing, too… At one of the events, two guys approached my parents and me to ask if I had any desire to record in a studio and cut a demo. I’d never really thought of it before. I was like, ‘Sure. OK…’ It was the summer before 9th grade, and I used some of the money I had made from doing local commercials and went into the studio for a week. And a guy who works for FedEx was delivering boxes and heard me singing in the studio, and it turned out the delivery guy had a friend of a friend of a friend who was the head of Urban A&R at Epic Records. It was the weirdest chain. I had no idea at the time, but he talked to the studio managers and they all decided to send this unfinished demo off. I can’t imagine how terrible it must have been, because I had never been in a recording studio before.

So anyway, I got a call to meet with a big fancy A&R guy who had flown down from New York. The meeting was the same day as my high school homecoming football game, and I was more concerned about making sure this meeting was done in time so I could hang out with my friends! [Laughs] It was so beyond my comprehension that this could actually lead to a career. I was 14! But, I ended up signing a record deal — this was the time of the Britney/Christina pop explosion. I guess I was my record label’s answer to those girls.

Also, she goes on to list all of her favorite makeup and skincare products (44 of them!), if you are into that sort of thing. I now have approximately 17,000 tabs open in my browser.

See also: “My Life as a Jonas Brother,” as told by Joe Jonas

Photo: aphrodite-in-nyc

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