Britney, Christina & Mandy: Pop Queens’ Battle

Paging Carson Daly: Total Request Live (TRL) gave us the holy trinity of late-’90s pop: Britney, Christina, and Jessica.

Mandy Moore showed up too — sweet, smiley, and singing about “Candy” in pleather pants.

But according to Moore herself? She wasn’t exactly pop’s main character.

“I feel like I was the youngest and the most boring… out of the four of us,” she laughed on a recent episode of Kylie Kelce’s Not Gonna Lie podcast.

A Walk to (Def) Remember

Pop’s low-key MVP reflected on her 1999 earworm “Candy,” released the same year as her peers’ blockbuster debuts — Spears’ "…Baby One More Time," Aguilera’s "Genie in a Bottle," and Simpson’s "Sweet Kisses."

The humble queen admitted she knew her place among pop’s princesses.

“I would never have been able to cross paths with them. They were, like, superstars. They were on this level of success that I’ve never known. I was just like a little 15-year-old doing my own thing,” Moore said.

Boring? More Like Ear 'Candy'

While she jokes about being the quiet one in the back of the pop princess group chat, Moore’s story hits different.

She was busy carving her own lane with bubblegum bops, teen movie moments, and a long career free of full-on tabloid meltdown.

“I was allowed to sort of make my own decisions even as a clueless 15-year-old,” she told Kylie.

“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.”

Not bad for someone who “wasn’t sure she belonged.” Other pop wannabes could "Only Hope" for her level of success.

(Immediately searches for DVD of A Walk to Remember.)

'TRL' Was a Different Beast

Moore also reflected on how the music industry — and fame itself — has changed since the days of LimeWire and Friendster.

“[With] social media and the world we live in now, there’s so many more mediums to reach people,” she said. “It was such a different world back then.”

Back then, fans waited for magazine interviews or a spot on MTV. Today? One TikTok and you’re viral.

When she started sounding too nostalgic, she caught herself: “I sound super old,” she laughed. (Kylie, 33, cracked up. Honestly, same.)

Moore’s most recent album, In Real Life, dropped in 2022 — and while she’s no longer chasing pop stardom, she’s still doing things on her own terms. Just like always.

P.S.: Don’t forget her starring role on 'This Is Us,' where she made us sob more times than we’d admit.