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Mandy Moore

Even considering seeing Mandy Moore in concert might make some people schedule a root canal. Her late-'90s bubblegum entries were outright painful — they couldn't even keep her on par with the likes of bad-girl Britney or buxom-blond Jessica. Since then, though, she's ditched the desperate-sounding, overly breathy strain of 2000's "I Wanna Be With You" and managed to turn out a confident folk-influenced catalog, impressing even the most die-hard sap-haters with tracks like "Extraordinary." Possibly the only good thing to come out of her relationship with overly emotive indie hero Zach Braff, her new musical ambitions mirror the big-screen career moves that took her from teen melodrama A Walk to Remember to the darkly satiric Saved! This latest tour behind new album Wild Hope should be a vast departure from those cavity-inducing early songs, even if the first single is called "Candy." Moore still occasionally walks on the Lite FM side, but Saturday she ought to give hungry fans something more substantial than just sweets.

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Rosenblum, Sophie