Speak

Lindsay Lohan leaps into her much anticipated debut CD with a blast of something that simulates warmed-over Led Zeppelin (the lyrically ferocious "First") and from there finesses it into a stylish experiment in pounding away at teen pop's predictability. Influences--not all of whom her 8-to-14-year-old fans will flip to, or even find, in their pinup mags--loom large: While the Ashlee Simpson-like rocker "Nobody 'Til You" winds into the Jessica Simpson-y "Symptoms of You," the lovelorn "Something I Never Had," taps a sweetly unself-conscious vocal vein that owes gratitude to the otherwise highly un-Lohan-like Lisa Loeb. Though Lohan might balk at the comparison--she is, after all, the "Ultimate"-spawning original teenage drama queen--fellow tween queen Hilary Duff's stamp is pressed firmly into stormy self-explorers like "Disconnected" and "Anything But Me." Where "Speak" intones loudest, though, is in its least-rocking, most beat-propelled songs: The title track dips and bounces tantalizingly, begging hands-in-the-air listeners to "c'mon and let it out"; "To Know Your Name" digitizes a sexy hip-hop inflected dance number; and "Rumors," a J. Lo-like thumper (and one in a trifecta of pouts over the pitfalls of stardom) ends this disc on a don't-stop, bound-for-diva-dom note. -Tammy La Gorce  more