SPEED THE PLOW AND STOP YOUR LIFE.
Many, many moons ago (10 years worth of moons, to be exact), back when the fetch-ness of the endlessly quotable, forever important Mean Girls was still fresh and un-memed by The Internet, then-Disney princess Lindsay Lohan made her very first move away from the acting scene to record her 2004 debut LP Speak, a crunchy collection of emo-lite angst and sassy electro-pop anthems including, of course, seminal classic “Rumors.”
A decade later, and the whole record remains a genuinely solid blast of pure early ’00’s pop-rock energy in a time of Evanescence and Kelly Clarkson‘s Breakaway, sung by a gravel-voiced teen starlet at the peak of her career, pre-Oprah: From the utterly incredible, “Express Yourself”-ish title track to the soul crushing devastation of “Over” to selfish ejaculation anthem “First” (“I wanna come first!“) to The World’s Greatest Song Of All Time Ever, “To Know Your Name.” (Oh my god, “Magnet” too. And “Symptoms Of You”! )
Did you somehow miss it the first time around? Sadly, the album isn’t available on Spotify because Lindsay Lohan is ahead of her time and saw Taylor Swift demanding those coins for her art years prior, but it is entirely on YouTube.
Evidently, Lilo was fondly recalling those recording sessions a decade later this weekend, as she Instagrammed the incredible cover art last evening. “10 years ago today was the release of my first album #SPEAK #SoLongAgoSunday” she wrote. Cue the feverish cries for a third LP by Brazil — until this happened this morning.
“#DuranDuran @alianalohan recording with some greats!!!,” Lilo wrote this morning, accompanied by a completely casual studio shot.
What. What. WHAT?!
To be fair, Simon Le Bon just hopped in the studio with Charli XCX for “Kingdom” on the impeccable Hunger Games soundtrack. Is he curating some sort of flawless queen collaboration project? Or maybe an update to a Duran Duran classic. Perhaps “Hungry Like The Lilo”? Also, hello ALI LOHAN. Are we getting a “Lohan Holiday” reboot? Frankly, no one is prepared.
Also, for what it’s worth, I reached out to the producers and songwriters behind Speak for a planned 10 year retrospective piece earlier this year and no one answered my emails. So, there is that.
