Effortlessly genial and impossibly well-scrubbed, Mandy Moore is almost shimmery enough to overshadow her middling vocal talent on Coverage. Taking on familiar songs, though, always unearths the rough edges beneath the polish, especially when they sound flat wrong emanating from the mouth of America's peppiest nineteen-year-old. Listen to Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow" or the Waterboys' "The Whole of the Moon," on which Moore wails, "While you filled the skies/I was dumbfounded by truth" about as convincingly as a flight attendant. Other tracks that were rendered indelible by previous vocalists — Carly Simon's "Anticipation," Joe Jackson's "Breaking Us in Two" — sound little better than American Idol outtakes here. The irony is that in denaturing these songs, Moore truly makes them her own.

“Time to Pretend”

Listening to MGMT’s breakthrough song, one might interpret it as being about the excesses of rock stardom, but it’s actually about the duo’s pet praying mantis. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone they got the idea from the insect's jerky movements. The mantis died, but the two bandmates kept the egg sack and allowed the hundreds of eggs to hatch. “We tried to name them all, but they died after a day,” said Goldwasser, with VanWyngarden chiming in, “But the praying mantis dance inspired us.”