Mandy Moore didn't think she was on the same level as 2000s pop stars Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson.
The singer-actress was a guest on the July 17 episode of podcast Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce, where she discussed her 1999 debut song "Candy" in comparison to the careers of the aforementioned singers. In the same year, Spears, Aguilera and Simpson released their first albums.
When asked if she was "friendly" or had a "relationship" with the singers, Moore said that their "paths didn't really cross."
"I feel like I was the youngest and the most boring of of sort of like out of the the four of us," Moore added with a chuckle.
The A Walk to Remember star expressed that she "lucked out" as her "label's answer to them" but that she was given the creative freedom to be herself.
"I was allowed to sort of make my own decisions even as a clueless 15-year-old," Moore said. "Nobody told me how I needed to dress or how I needed to answer questions or what lane to sort of occupy or how to present myself to the world."
Moore added that she "maybe ran into Jessica Simpson a few times" but said that Spears and Aguilera were in an "echelon unto themselves."
"I would never have been able to like cross paths with them," she said. They were like superstars. I was just like a little 15-year-old doing my own thing."
Regardless, Moore says that contemporary pop fans wouldn't be able to understand the "space" these singers "occupied" in the late 1990s and 2000s.
"It's hard to really explain because I feel like social media and the world we live in now, it's so diluted," she said. "We have access to anyone and everyone that we're really curious about for the most part at all times."
Moore joked that she sounded "super old" reflecting on Y2K pop culture but that it was a "different world." The artist released three pop albums until 2003 before switching to soft rock and folk. Moore's latest album, In Real Life, was released in 2022.
ComplexCon returns to Las Vegas on October 25–26, 2025, with over 300 brands and live performances by Young Thug, YEAT & Friends, Peso Pluma, Central Cee, Ken Carson, and more. Get your tickets now.