It was especially shitty because her image and her sound and everything were all about innocence, you know—like, it was all so wholesome and good and clean—but the obvious next step for her, like, the obvious next phase of her career was for her to become “sexy” in one way or another. Like, everybody was pretending for the moment that she didn’t have boobs and they didn’t want to fuck her, but like, the SECOND she turned eighteen, like, the literal moment when the clock struck midnight, everybody was expecting her to drop some video where she was in a bra and panties and like, she was all lubed up with grease in a mechanic shop, humping a wrench and singing about some guy “fixing her up like a carburetor.” But Mandy couldn’t do that shit yet because it basically would’ve been child porn, you know? Her team kept trying to come up with all this shit for her to do—like, they were trying to come up with stuff that was like, still hot and catchy and could still get people dancing but that wasn’t too overtly sexual—but the result, to me, just felt like lies. It just felt really dry and empty and manufactured. And I mean, it worked—like, the fans still loved it, and they still played it on the radio, and Mandy still had a sold-out tour with L.A. Baby and Heartache/Heartbreak—but I just kind of couldn’t stand the music she was making. Honestly, I got the sense that neither could she. I mean, that was always the sad part to me: She has this next-level voice—like, honestly, Mandy has one of the best singing voices I’ve ever heard. It’s like, actually, technically perfect. And it’s not just like she’s naturally talented or something. I mean, she IS naturally talented, that’s not even a question, but like, the thing about Mandy that I don’t think a lot of people realize is that she’s this incredibly skilled musician. You can give her a piece of sheet music, like, literally anything, and she can sight-read it for you first try. It doesn’t matter if it’s new shit or old shit or if it’s even in her key. She can do it—but it just seemed at the time like she didn’t really know WHY she was singing, you know? It seemed like she didn’t really have a REASON. The dedication was all there, the work ethic was all there, but she didn’t have any DIRECTION. She was like one of those kids who’s crushing it in high school and getting straight As and playing the violin and like, joining all the clubs, and running track, and then like, if you ask them why any of this shit is important to them, they just look at you like: What the fuck are you talking about? And so whenever I’d be like: What kind of ARTIST do you want to be? What do you want to be singing about? she would always just get really pissed off and defensive.