Mandy Moore stepped onto the small stage at Amoeba Records in Hollywood with a quick wave.

Mandy Moore, now 25, is following her bliss with her new album, “Amanda Leigh.”

“Hi, shoppers,” she giggled somewhat self-consciously.

The audience of several hundred, stuffed between the music racks at the landmark store, giggled back.

“This is so weird to be playing here. I live in the neighborhood, and this is where I get my CDs and my DVDs!” she said. Then she launched into selections from her sixth studio album, “Amanda Leigh.”

Somewhere out of sight was her new husband, Ryan Adams — the alt-country hero she married in March, after a one-month engagement.

It’s been 10 years since Moore burst onto the pop scene as a lanky, blonde 15-year-old singing and dancing her way through a sweetly suggestive tune called “Candy.” Her musical fare now is more eclectic and stripped down — even featuring vintage instruments such as the clavinet and melodica.

Unlike such early contemporaries as Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson, Moore has gone for cred over commercial success in both her music and movie careers, and it suits her well. There’s an authenticity there, as well as a genuine warmth and charm.

Moore spoke about her artistic growth, a musical funk, and working with her new husband. The following is an edited version of the interview.

CNN: A friend of mine made an interesting analogy, saying these last two albums of yours (including 2007’s folk-leaning “Wild Hope”) are to your music career what “Saved!” was to your movie career, in terms of establishing yourself critically.

Mandy Moore: I take that as a compliment. I mean, I sort of feel lucky to have the opportunity to do film stuff and music at the same time, because I love doing both. But … if you make a move one way with one side of your career, you sort of have to balance it out on the other side.

I feel like with the last two records, I have been in control creatively. They are probably more like some of the cooler indie movies that I have been lucky enough to get to do.

CNN: You could have continued in the mainstream pop world, like some of the singers you came up with.

Moore: I sort of started around the same time as a lot of my contemporaries, like the Britney Spearses and the Christina Aguileras of the world, and they are amazing and everybody is still around and doing their thing. I just never truly felt comfortable with the music that I was singing — even back then. I mean, I was happy to have the opportunity, but I was still scratching my head, “Well, there has got to be something else, there has got to be something more.” …

It’s just about doing what you are truly passionate about and fighting for that. I could have stayed on the same path that I started on, and who knows what would have happened if I would have found success with that — or none at all — but I knew I would not have been happy if I had made that decision. And I’m doing what I love now, and I think that’s more important than anything.

CNN: The new album is called “Amanda Leigh,” which is your real name. So is this kind of a reintroduction to people about who you really are — a grown-up Mandy Moore?

Moore: To be quite honest, even though the record is called “Amanda Leigh,” and that is my given name, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of thought behind the idea of “This is the real me. Forget the Mandy Moore stuff. That’s kid stuff.” No, it was kind of a simple, almost frivolous decision.

My friend Mike Viola [of the Candy Butchers], who I wrote the whole record with, called me Amanda Leigh when we were in the studio all the time. Like “Amanda Leigh, come on, we’ve got to get to work!” And I don’t know, it just sort of became synonymous with making the record to me. I had never really owned my name. It was just synonymous with my parents being mad at me. So I was like, “All right, I’m 25, I’m a woman, I’m an adult. I think I can probably take ownership with that name now and be OK with it.” But I’m still happy to be Mandy at the end of the day.

CNN: Well, you can actually change your name even further. You can go by Amanda Adams [her married name] these days.

Moore: I’m going to really throw people off and completely change my name. That will be the next record. You know, just to throw a real wrench into the situation.

CNN: I’m probably blowing it for you when you check into hotels under names that nobody would expect you to use.

Moore: (Glancing over at her husband) Should I give my name? I’ll have to change it, but it’s time for a new one. I was Cornish Gamehen for a while, which was bizarre. But for the last couple years, I have been Meryl Inch — however, there is too much of a debacle going on there these days to continue that. So I have to come up with something creative.

CNN: What’s it like to not be on a major label these days? There must be some freedom attached to it, but then you don’t have the big bucks behind you, as well as the whole machinery.

Moore: I don’t think you need the whole machine, the whole middleman behind you nowadays, like in terms of a big record label giving you a push. …

I think it has allowed me the creative freedom to truly make the kind of music that I want to by being on an indie label. … I’m much happier with this road.

CNN: Was there a period of depression you went through that had you reworking things in your head, and trying to find out who you were?

Moore: I think the writing process for the last record, for “Wild Hope,” I found myself in a bit of a funk. I don’t know if I would necessarily classify it as a depression, but I was definitely in a very deeply, darkly place for me, and I had never really been there before. And there was a lot of investigation and questions bouncing around in my head that I found I could answer by kind of investing myself in music and writing.

CNN: I would love to be a fly on the wall in your house, just to see the music that you and Ryan come up with.

Moore: There is a lot of music in the house, whether someone is playing it, or there’s a record on or something. I’ve been introduced to a lot of metal in my relationship, which is pretty cool, because my guy is a big metal fan, and it isn’t something I would necessarily investigate on my own — but I do like it. It’s just nice to have that truly built-in support system that someone is unbelievably understanding of what you do.

CNN: Like a lot of people, I was shocked when I read you and Ryan had gotten married.

Moore: Yeah, we sort of snuck it by a lot of people. Pretty handy. That’s how we roll. Life is good, and I’m a really lucky girl, and I’m very happy. It’s a very exciting time to be 25 years old and truly fulfilled in so many aspects.

He was surrounded and pleading for them to stop but six men with clubs, batons and metal rods kept battering a young Iranian man with ruthless force. The swing that keeps replaying in my head was the black baton that smashed the man in the skull behind his left ear.

An eyewitness says the hatred is palpable on both sides in the streets of Tehran.

Seconds earlier the man had dared to stand up to the baton wielding men because they had shoved a 14-year-old girl. For his chivalry he got one of the most savage beatings I have ever seen at the hands of four Iranian riot policemen and members of the Baseej, Iran’s plain clothed volunteer militia.

“To hell with Iran,” he said as he sat beaten and battered along the sidewalk. “This is not my government. This is not my country.”

A grown man who watched the beating burst into tears.

This was a glimpse of the ugly aftermath of Iran’s presidential elections, which sparked outrage among supporters of candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi.

Moussavi’s backers are calling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory a sham. They’re demanding the vote be annulled. The government’s response has been a ruthless and violent crackdown.

For eight chaotic hours I saw the two sides clash throughout the streets of Tehran. These were Iranians versus Iranians, but the two sides were worlds apart in appearance, ideology and brute force.

Moussavi’s supporters were mostly young 20-something men and women. They were college students, young professionals with degrees demanding social freedom, a better way of life, and better relations with the West.

Two teenage girls carrying bricks had French manicured fingernails and designer sunglasses. The protesters threw objects, burned trash bins, honked their horns and chanted “death to the dictator!”

They were loud, until they heard the roar of the motorcycles.

The motorcycles belonged to two groups of Ahmadinejad supporters: Iran’s riot police and the Baseej.

The riot police looked like modern gladiators, muscular and menacing with camouflaged uniforms, black boots, black bulletproof vests and black shielded helmets. They rode in pairs. One drove while the other wielded a club or a baton. They swarmed crowds of rowdy protesters in packs of about 20, beating anyone who got in their way.

On several occasions I saw female Moussavi supporters plead with their male counterparts not to run away. But they almost always did. They were clearly intimidated by the brutal show of force.

The Baseejis were just as ruthless. Those who didn’t ride on motorcycles walked the streets in large packs carrying clubs. They didn’t wear uniforms, so they could easily ambush protesters. They beat one protester so badly that he collapsed in the middle of an intersection and trembled uncontrollably. I saw one battered young man crawl into the lobby of an apartment building, curl up under the stairwell and sob. He had welts on his forehead and bruises up and down his arms.

“They hit me with everything,” he said as he gasped for air. “They hit with clubs. They hit me with chains.”

When the two sides weren’t throwing objects at one another, they were hurling insults. I heard and felt the hatred on both sides.

During a Saturday afternoon news conference Ahmadinejad compared the violent crackdown against the protesters to a citation after a traffic ticket.

A few hours later thousands gathered in midtown Tehran to hear Ahmadinejad deliver a victory speech. The re-elected president said the elections belonged to Iran’s people.

Never since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 have Iran’s people appeared this divided.

As protests continue over the disputed presidential elections in Iran, we asked two analysts to explain the background to the controversy.

Supporters of President Ahmadinejad wave flags at a massive rally in Tehran Sunday to celebrate his victory.

Q) What degree of election monitoring is there in Iran?

A) The problem with this election, according to London-based Mideast analyst Amir Taheri, is that there is no independent monitoring at all in Iran with the interior ministry arguing that the Council of the Guardians of the Constitution, a “star chamber” of 12 mullahs, would have that role.

“Candidates are not allowed to be present at polling stations during voting or counting. Many voters are illiterate and officials help them fill in their ballot papers, so the possibilities for rigging are immense. And there are no booths in the polling stations so voting is done in public, not in private — a major obstacle for transparency,” Taheri said.

So the problem for opposition candidates in this election, said Taheri, the author of “The Persian Night,” is that there are no concrete examples of fraud because there was no monitoring. “You could say all of Iran’s 10 presidential elections have been fraudulent or that all were fair — we just don’t know. All have been held in the same way. The whole electoral process from the vetting of candidates to voting and ballot counting is conducted by the state.”

Q) So is it possible that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did win the election?

A) The president does indeed have great public support in Iran, Taheri said, adding that “I’m sure he did win the election but it’s impossible he won 63 percent of the vote. The results probably exaggerated the scale of his support.”

According to official results, Ahmadinejad won in all regions and among all classes and ages — again, something that Taheri said was unlikely, “but I can’t prove it.”

Had he not exaggerated the scale of his victory, Taheri said, unlike in previous presidential elections, it is possible there wouldn’t be the outcry there is now. “Many Iranians feel insulted by the results because they feel their vote didn’t count. Everybody knows, for instance that Ahmadinejad is unpopular in cities but he still won the vote there. That is why people are so angry.”

Another Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour agreed, saying he believed this was “a stolen election.”

“There are a lot of signs there were major improprieties. First of all there were 40 million votes cast and just two hours after the polls had closed they announced Ahmadinejad’s victory: and these votes are hand counted in Iran…

Sadjadpour, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, added: “Another example I give is that (opposition leader Mir Hossein) Moussavi, who is an ethnic Azeri Turk, lost the province of Iranian Azerbaijan. This is the equivalent of Barack Obama losing the African American vote to John McCain in 2008.”

Q) Will the anger and protests on the streets subside or grow into something much greater?

A) Much depends on what the opposition candidates do in coming days, according to Sadjadpour. “We’ve never in the 30-year history of the Islamic republic seen the revolutionary elite so divided,” he said. Former centrist president Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the Islamic republic, and Moussavi are now both opposition candidates. “They feel the election was stolen from them and that the majority of public support is on their side. They’re planning more public protests so this tumult may not subside any time soon.”

Q) How will the regime deal with these protests?

A) Iran’s leaders “have repression down to a science,” said Sadjadpour. “Before the election they ease political and social restrictions because they want to project a democratic face to the world. But at times like these when rallies are getting out of hand they use overwhelming force to nip them in the bud. So I anticipate more use of force to ensure they don’t get out of hand.”

Q) What will the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei do?

A) This is the big question and there were reports on Monday he would agree to an investigation into allegations of vote rigging. Speaking earlier, Sadjadpour said he felt the supreme leader would not intervene unless he felt his sustainability as leader was at stake. “The reason why is that I believe he was behind this power grab. Ahmadinejad was his candidate so he’s not exactly an objective actor. Opposition candidates are trying to appeal to Khamenei before they take to the streets but I’m not sure how he walks back from this.”

Q) What does four more years of Ahmadinejad mean for Iran and the rest of the world?

A) The big problem the United States and Europe is to stop Iran from going nuclear and Ahmadinejad’s reelection means Iran’s aggressive policy towards the West is not going to change. “I feel the results are quite disastrous,” said Sadjadpour. “In terms of the U.S.-Iran relationship, Ahmadinejad’s mere presence could well serve as an insurmountable obstacle to confidence building. He presses the worst buttons in the context of domestic U.S. politics with his denial of the Holocaust and belligerence towards Israel. Domestically in Iran he has profoundly mismanaged the economy with one of the highest inflation rates in the world and high unemployment.”

However according to TIME magazine, behind closed doors the White House may be relieved by the result. Despite the attention paid to the office of the Iranian presidency, nuclear policy is set by the country’s religious leaders and appear determined to amass enriched uranium whether or not a hard-liner or a moderate is president, the magazine said Monday.

“Ahmadinejad’s win may increase Washington’s chances of getting tougher sanctions on Iran if they refuse to negotiate,” TIME reported senior Administration officials as saying.

Iran’s main opposition leader appeared at a rally in Tehran Monday, the first time he has been seen in public since last week’s elections which he says were rigged to give hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad overwhelming victory.

Protesters carry banners denouncing Iran’s election result.

Reformist Mir Hossein Moussavi appeared before hundreds of thousands of people, a reporter for Iran’s Press TV said.

Moussavi may be trying to get Tehran’s Freedom Square to address the demonstrators, Moussavi supporters told CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

There was no chanting, with demostrators quieting anyone who tried to shout slogans, Amanpour said, because the Interior Ministry has banned political demonstrations. The rally is a repeat of a march which Moussavi supporters staged Wednesday, before the election.

Earlier, the country’s government-funded Press TV reported that Iran’s Guardian Council — a body of top clerics and judges — will investigate Moussavi’s claims the ballot was rigged. It is expected to issue its findings within 10 days.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has given his blessing to the outcome of the election, assured Moussavi of the Council’s investigation in a meeting Sunday, Press TV said.

Moussavi had been expected to ask followers to call off the spontaneous demonstrations and appeal for calm, sources told CNN.

Opposition groups launched protests after Ahmadinejad’s claim he had won 62 percent of the vote, despite predictions the election would be closely fought amid growing disquiet over the president’s economic and foreign policies.

Hundreds of Moussavi supporters Monday defied a government ban on their rallies, gathering for a demonstration at Tehran University. The government had earlier in the day rejected a request by Moussavi to hold a nationwide march.

“They are chanting slogans: ‘Death to the dictator,’” said a witness who CNN will not identify for safety reasons. “We are here. We will not leave the scene until our presence is known.”

On Monday, Ahmadinejad delayed by a day a trip to Russia to meet with President Dmitry Medvedev because of the post-election unrest, the Iranian embassy said.

Iran’s media mostly ignored the protests and international journalists were prevented from covering the demonstrations.

“It’s horrific, shameful and paradoxical to what you see on TV,” said a Moussavi supporter, who CNN will not identify for safety reasons.

The France-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders said it had confirmed the arrest of four reporters by Iranian authorities, including one who won the organization’s press freedom prize in 2001.

In addition, it said, it had no information about 10 other reporters who had either gone into hiding or had been arrested.

Reporters for an Italian station, RAI, and for Reuters were beaten by police in the capital, Tehran. And a CNN producer was hit with a police baton.

Iranian authorities closed Al-Arabiya’s Tehran bureau for a week without explanation, the Arabic network said on Sunday. And two reporters were attacked outside Moussavi’s headquarters on Friday, according to Reporters Without Borders.

The Web sites of pro-opposition supporters were inaccessible, and the government also had periodically shut down access to social-networking sites, making it difficult for information to reach the outside world.

“An election won by means of censorship and arrests of journalists is not democratic,” the reporters group said.

The international community, already at loggerheads with Ahmadinejad’s government over a nuclear enrichment program it fears will be used to produce weapons, aired unease over the election and its aftermath.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden expressed doubts Sunday about the validity of the election, but said it would take time to analyze the results.

Other countries, such as Canada and France, also voiced concern about vote irregularities but had not explicitly refused to accept the results.

Germany — one of Iran’s biggest trading partners and a key player in efforts to dissuade Iran from pursuing a nuclear program — said it would summon the Iranian ambassador Monday to explain “brutal handling” of protesters.

Protests have also been held in cities including Washington; London, Toronto and, while tens of thousands of others championed the demonstrations on social-networking Web sites.

“They’re over there risking their lives. We have to do our part to make sure the world does not overlook this,” said Joya Jaisinth, a homemaker in New York.

Con Coughlin, author of “Khomeini’s Ghost” said Iran has twice seen public calls for reform in recent years. On both occasions — in 1999 after the closure of a reformist newspaper; and after parliamentary elections in 2000 — the military stepped in.

“On both those occasions, the Revolutionary Guard, the security forces came out in force. And within a few days, the whole thing has been crushed,” he said. “I just fear the same thing will happen this time.”