YOU SHOULD KNOW (#4): Mandy Ventrice

YOU SHOULD KNOW:
Mandy Ventrice
http://www.myspace.com/mandyventrice

Amanda Nicole Ventrice, better known as Mandy Ventrice, is a 23 year old singer songwriter from California. She first burst through in the scene in 1999, releasing her first solo CD independently. Shortly thereafter, she joined a fledgling pop girl group called Poetry In Motion, which, though similar in sound to its contemporaries P.Y.T., Dream and 3LW (or rather, a mixture of all three), failed to break through into the musical mainstream. It was during this time that I first heard of Mandy, as I was a big fan of the PoM song "Down With You" (not to be confused with P.Y.T.'s "Down With Me"). The group broke up in 2002, and Mandy began her long, winding path of solo musicianship, working with several different producers and going through several different styles, unwilling to be held down into one specific genre, but all of them being a version of pop.

Currently her sound is very electro pop friendly, but her rock roots continue to show through. In 2008, she began performing with rock trio Lights Resovlve, supplying main vocals for a few songs. She also guested on the song "No No You Didn't" by Shermanelli. Not too long ago, she premiered a very straight pop ballad called "In this Alone" which remains as one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard from an unsigned artist.

However, it is her solo music that adore so much and I have trouble picking my favorite of those currently featured on her MySpace page. "Cupcake" is saccharine sweet in its simplicity, while "Ditto" is very very catchy. But my personal fave will have to be a tossup between the 'Mean Girls'-esque "Hussy" and the swingin' "Bitten".

It's hard to explain Mandy's voice. Her aestetic is very mod electro chic, and honestly, if there was one person in music right now whose style I'd want to carbon copy (besides Lady Gaga, but let's be real -- no one can pull that ish off except her) would be Mandy. Her voice is effortless in strength, unique in timbre, a sort of Christina Aguilera if she got mishmashed up with Santogold, Lady Gaga, all of The Saturdays fused into one Saturday and something else that I can't quite put my finger on.

She's still very marketable pop, but is undeniably off the beaten path just a little bit. Plus she writes all of her own material.

Check her out. Tell me what you think.