Mandy Moore Discography Rate - Complete! (Stream 'Silver Landings' on March 6th!)

I used to religously watch unboxing videos because I wanted to know what the inside of CDs I didn't own looked like. I haven't done that in years though.

 

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"Quit Breaking My Heart" | 6.503



Rated 78th out of 84 total songs

Rated 15th out of 16 for So Real/I Wanna Be With You




Chart info or stats:

The 36th most scrobbled Mandy song on Last.fm



Liner Notes


Written by: Tony Battaglia and Shaun Fisher.
Produced by: The Wasabees

The song was track 7 on the US Version of So Real. On European versions of I Wanna Be With You, it was medleyed with 'Telephone(Interlude) from So Real as track 9 on that album.



"My own parade…"
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Well, who knows if Bonnie ever heard back from Mandy, but @VivaForever 's calls have been answered by me. Much like 'Your Face' was the first Mandy cut in last year's 90's Pop Princess Rate, the first song cut from So Real is the same here.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with 'Quit Breaking My Heart'. It just sounds like vanilla teen ballad filler. These kind of songs were a dime a dozen in the early 00's. Mandy’s vocal is sweet on the song & lyrically, it’s one of the less cringey on So Real to me. As such, I feel it lends itself to one of her more heartfelt vocal deliveries. I say heartfelt, because it’s not one of her best vocals, in my opinion. I find it a bit all over the place. It's one of the few songs on album where she sounds young, but its sweet. Like a lot of So Real, it has its charm... and has grown on me some over the years.

Here’s the 20 Million Dollar question: Why was this song deemed ‘reprise worthy’? I’ve seriously always wondered that. Was it a single contender at some point? I feel like having an interlude before it & reprise of it later in the album draws a lot of attention to the song. With that ring of thought let me say something a bit controversial, I wonder if this would’ve been a better ballad single choice than ‘Walk Me Home’. Now let me clear, I’m just playing revisionist pop marketing team here. (This is just game I play since I like a of flop artists & albums. I like to think about what songs from an album or marketing strategies could've 'saved' an album from flopping.)

Look, I think ‘Walk Me Home’ is a superior song, but the fact is it flopped twice as a single. The more I listened to 'Quit Breaking My Heart' over the years, I feel like it would've had a better shot at being a hit. It has a bit more of that middle of the road/AC sound that the teen pop ballad was starting to cross over into in the early 00's & that Mandy would go full sail with on 'I Wanna Be With You'.

All that being said, I love three things about this song. One is the very brief vocal harmony ad-libs from 2:40-2:50. That 10 seconds is a piece of pop heaven in fairly generic song. I wish they had made it a single for that reason alone.

The other is the quirky 'Telephone' interlude that leads into it. It's so early 00's it hurts, but much like how Epic got 'Your Face' right making it the album closer on the European version of I Wanna Be With You, they also got right just bundling 'Telephone(Interlude)' & 'Quit Breaking My Heart' on that version as one track. (Though oddly, they completely dropped to 'Quit Breaking My Heart' reprise.) It just adds some quirky dramatics to the song when they are played together.

The other reason I like this song, is actually the aforementioned ‘reprise’. It’s actually one of my favorite tracks on So Real & added a half point+ to this song. Not to keep dwelling on the song 'I Wanna Be With You', but the reprise here does really give a sneak preview of that masterpiece. It showcases how pure Mandy can sound over some simple acoustic instrumentation. In my head canon, that 59 second reprise was heard by the right person, which is how Mandy got tapped to sing 'I Wanna Be With You'.

My Score: 7



"Kicking up confetti leaves…"


Sparkle In The Sky
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@Sprockrooster (9): Always a big fan of reprises. Where did they go? I miss them! (They did add a certain 'cinematic' element to albums.)

@Music Is Life (9): A cute mid-tempo. I like the lyrics, and the production is great. The reprise is cute too. (So, you're on my marketing team in 2000 to make a this a single, then? We're pretending here @Music Is Life... please don't remind me that you were like 1 or something in 2000!)

@unnameable (9): I used to find this one bland, but listening to it again for this rate it seems much better. Maybe I was too used to the version on the UK edition of “I wanna be with you”? (It's grown on me over the years too. I maybe even underscored it a tad. Maybe in Mandy's 2030 discog rate it will get an 8 from me.)


@Zar-Unity (8.8):
We first get a silly telephone reprise before Mandy's next pop ballad comes in, which kinda sounds unnecessary but this was common practice in the late 90's and early 00's with R&B pop albums to insert the artist chatting on the phone to her girlfriends about break ups and new love interests. What a lovely and pretty opening of acoustic guitar, then comes in Mandy's dreamy voice. I don't think that this ballad is as good as walk me home but it's still solid. The title line in the lyrics sung sounds a little awkward but the way Mandy sings on the rest of the song really works. Again, the soulful sound to Mandy's voice really makes the song and captivates the listener. Some of the background vocal parts and inserted bits are just genius! For late 90's acoustic pop ballads with a beat, this is a good example of the best produced form of that. The production is just so well done here! (@Zar-Unity coming through to save me with more epic So Real commentary. It's my least fave by Mandy so I appreciate your passion & it makes me like the album even more.)


@tylerc904 (8)

Corner of your eye

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@Robert (6) , @chris4862 (6.5) , @RUNAWAY (6)

@ohnostalgia (6) : This is probably the least manufactured Mandy sounds on So Real, so it pains me to give Quit Breaking a lower score. Sadly, there’s nothing that holds my attention. (Sometimes I think you're my PJ kindred spirit! Your commentary is basically a more succinct version of my rambling opinion in the first paragraph here... and thus correct. Haha!)

@Remorque (7):
This one falls under the same category as Walk Me Home. I've never quite invested in it, but I've never outright hated it. She sounds lovely, but that's about it. Bonnie calling her for the tea is a mood though. (Yes! Finally some justice for Bonnie... 20 years later. #BonnieNeedsTheTea)

@vague (6): could never really get into this, and it still does nothing for me. (So, you're not feeling my 'this could've been a single' angle. Fair. All focus group feedback is welcome in this revisionist marketing journey.)

@Florencia. . (6.5) : Her lovely vocals improve the original version of the song so much. A pity that it is so short! (So, @Florencia. sent in scores for the song(5) & reprise (7.75). I just averaged them into a 6.5. That 7.75 for the reprise though... they know what's going on!)

Still Undiscovered

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@VivaForever (3), @Robsolete (5.5), @ladylloyd (5), @CasuallyCrazed (4.25)

@LKane (4) : Remember that group m2m? It’s like listening a song from that band. But they sounded better. (I don't even care about the 4. All this praise for M2M in this rate is giving me life.)

For Your Viewing & Listening Pleasure

SCREEEEAAAAAMMMMM!!!!!

 

Yeah, I don't mind unboxing videos sometimes, but usually the people talk some or describe some things, right? There's a sense of excitement. That dude is just like showing us a cd, with no audio or context. So weird to me....

 

Well yeah I'd be in. (But I had just been born in 2000 FYI, I was only a few months old when this album came out.)

 

It is not that bad actually, but totally a filler.

 

YAY!

 

Out of curiosity: Was Tangled your first real exposure to Mandy? Did you have any idea who she was or her pop past until recently? If so, when?

She crosses generations in weird ways, so I'm really interested since you're part of the younger generation here on PJ.

 

*does some math*

Oh so this is what it's like to feel old.

 

It's ok. My favorite pop thing of the moment is Maisie Peters. She's all of 18. I was reading a BBC article about her the other day & literally laughed out loud at this point:

Maisie Peters ambles on stage wearing a Clueless t-shirt, championing a film that was made six years before she was born. But her witty, clever lyrics share a lot of Cher Horiwitz's coming-of-age concerns - stupid boys, catty girls, and clumsily working out your place in the world.

I felt all like:

 

Pre-Tangled I would have been aware of her in Princess Diaries, and Brother Bear 2 even if I didn't actually know her name. I also might have seen her in other stuff and just don't remember.
And I'd always been aware of her, like I knew her name growing up. Also for some reason I thought So Real came out in 2000, so I wasn't even alive yet.

 

Aagh...when Clueless came out, I had just had a terrible lecture on excitatory amino acids and neurodegeneration. I decided to stop studying for the day and go to the movies and fell in love with Alicia Silverstone.
Now I'm middle-aged, Alicia hasn't done much recently, and somehow Paul Rudd became a superhero movie star in his 40s.

 

Yeah, I thought about it & realized my 11 was the first one out in @vague 's 9MUSES rate... like four reveals into the rate (I still contend that 'Give Me' is a freaking bop that hasn't left my head since, but I digress). Since there's almost twice as many songs in this rate, I guess it just seemed kinda jarring to lose an 11 so soon.

 

Thanks so much for the kind words!
As far as I know Christmas was never released anywhere officially. I guess that’s why David sent it to me so it could be put ‘out there’ at least. I never knew he recorded his own version, so I shall have a listen!

 

Bonnie was Mandy’s real best friend when the album was made, wasn’t she? I wondered what happened to their friendship and if they’re still in touch.

Quit Breaking my Heart is a nice song but no where on the (high) level of Your Face for me. It just have been a while until I got to hear the reprise too as like you said @pop3blow2 it wasn’t on the U.K. version of the album. To those asking where did reprises go... do you not remember the Merrimack River one from Amanda Leigh? (Although that is 10 years(!) old now!).

 

Haha! Yeah, Tangled is obviously full of reprises too (though that's expected for a musical, I guess). I think @Sprockrooster 's musing was just about where have reprises gone, in general on pop albums. Maybe when Mandy drops her next album she'll have another reprise on there... keep the dream alive Mandy!

 

I just got all emotional working on the post for next elimination. Dammit Mandy Moore.

 

I've only just realized that Mandy's Christmas present in @pop3blow2's current avatar is some variant of Clue (looks like one of the card games). Fuck I love her.

 

New reveal in a bit. Gotten sucked into work & New Music Friday (New albums from Carly & Phildel.... so, my brain...)