Those mean girls out there hoping that Lindsay Lohan would fall flat on her face with her debut album will be disappointed. The 18-year-old actress, aiming to pull a Hilary Duff and rule the music charts as well as the box office, hardly embarrasses herself on this competent collection of teen pop. She's a passable singer and she even cowrote 5 of 12 tunes. Still, Speak doesn't say a whole lot about who Lohan really is as an artist. Many of these fairly generic tracks sound like they could have been done by Hilary, Britney or Ashlee. And her attempt to reveal some of herself on the dance number "Rumors," on which she lashes out at the gossip mill and the paparazzi, lacks real depth: "I can tell that you're watching me/And you're probably gonna write what you didn't see/I just need a little space to breathe/Can you please respect my privacy?" Even so, it's hard to resist the pop charms of the title track, an infectious techno-rocker, and the piano-laced power ballad "Symptoms of You," which should make Vanessa Carlton jealous. —C.A.
