Mandy Moore Saves Stipe

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Mandy Moore and Michael Stipe have recorded a cover of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" for Moore's upcoming movie Saved!.

The R.E.M. singer, who co-produced the teen spoof, wanted to join Moore after hearing her initial rendition of the song. "He left me such a sweet little message like, 'You have such a beautiful voice,'" Moore says. "That he wanted to be a part of it was so fucking cool. He actually invited me into his studio to meet the guys."

In Saved! -- which Stipe has likened to "monster vampire high school kind of movies, only here the monsters are Jesus-freak teenagers" -- Moore stars alongside a wheelchair-bound McCauley Caulkin as a Bible-thumping senior at American Christian High.

"My character just thinks that she is so much better than everybody else because she has this personal relationship with Jesus," Moore says. "I got to play the bad girl, which is so much more fun than what I've been doing: the girl who always gets the guy at the end of the film."

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

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