The early 2000s were brimming with “it girls” on the covers of tabloids: Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and, of course, Lindsay Lohan.

In 2004, Lohan was everywhere. She was riding high from the success of Freaky Friday the year prior and had leading roles in Mean Girls and Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen. She graced the covers of magazines like Rolling Stone, GQ, and Interview and was catnip for paparazzi thanks to an alleged hit and run, the tumult of her dad’s legal issues, her own hospitalization from a mystery illness, and an alleged love triangle between her, Aaron Carter and Hilary Duff.

Lohan learned to play guitar for Freaky Friday, and she showcased her vocal talent on “Ultimate,” a power-pop song by her character’s band Pink Slip that closes out the movie. By early 2004, she was on four glittery pop songs from the Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen soundtrack and the commanding, Diane Warren-penned “I Decide” from The Princess Diaries 2.

So it made sense that Lohan’s dabble into music would become something bigger, and at the tail end of 2004, it did. Twenty years ago this Saturday, she released Speak, her infamous debut album, primed for the Warped Tour set, late nights out in LA, and shielding bright lights on pap walks. Lohan, like Duff and Raven-Symoné before her, was the latest teen idol in the Disney family to launch a pop career.

But Speak had an edge: Lohan harnessed the angsty ethos of Avril Lavigne, the rawness of Hole, and the intoxicating dancefloor numbers of Britney Spears. The album was emblematic of the early 2000s media circus surrounding Hollywood starlets, where any partying faux pas caught on camera at the Chateau Marmont haunted them in the years to come. It wasn’t necessarily meant to be as commercially palatable as Duff’s Metamorphosis the year prior, but that’s what made it so compelling — the grit in Lohan’s vocals, the bubbling teen angst, the drama.

While Lohan initially signed to Emilio Estefan Jr.’s label, Speak was released on Casablanca Records and featured 10 tracks written and produced by industry powerhouses Kara DioGuardi and John Shanks. Instead of going all-in on arena-pop, guitar-rock, or balladry, Lohan opted not to box herself in. Speak was an opportunity for her to embrace self-discovery.

In the 20 years since its release, Lohan’s take-no-prisoners lead single “Rumors” has lived on as a cult favorite. With a pulsating synth-pop beat evoking Spears’ In The Zone, Lohan didn’t mince words when it came to the pitfalls of fame. “I’m tired of rumors starting/ I’m sick of being followed/ I’m tired of people lying/ Sayin’ what they want about me,” she seethed. In hindsight, there’s a mournful element to this dance-pop number, which makes it feel like a plea for some semblance of normalcy rather than a takedown of the media. The accompanying music video honed in on the suffocation of fame, with Lohan taking a swing at a camera in an elevator and dodging flashing camera lights throughout the video. In it, there was even a clever nod to a tabloid photo where she was captured taking a photo of the paparazzi with a disposable camera.

Lohan followed up “Rumors” with “Over,” a melodramatic anthem about an on-and-off-again romance that channels the wistfulness of Ashlee Simpson’s “Pieces Of Me” and the longing of Michelle Branch — another side of the album’s multi-faceted sound.

On Speak, Lohan didn’t abandon the impact of Pink Slip. The album’s opener “First,” with its cheeky sexual double entendre, seemed to be somewhat of a nod to the fake band with a side of Hole’s snarl (“‘Cause when I see you something inside me burns/ And then I realize/ I want to come first”), while “Nobody Til’ You” was an exhilarating guitar-rock anthem where Lohan attempted to stop paying mind to her reputation (“They can break me, make me/ If they want they can chase me/ Love me, hate me/ I don’t care anymore.” “Symptoms Of You” also takes cues from Lohan’s on-screen rocker era, launching as a twinkling ballad that explodes into wistful guitar rock anthem that compares love to falling ill.

Lohan largely spends Speak lamenting the need to hide herself beneath a shiny veneer. “I just wanna live my life sedated,” she belts on the power ballad “Disconnected.” On the raucous rock number “Anything But Me,” she simply doesn’t want to keep herself buried beneath her perceived persona any longer: “She’s fallen asleep/ And I’m trying to wake her/ Set her free.”

But Lohan perhaps has the most fun when she’s playing with dance-pop. On the album’s dizzying title track, her husky lilt demands a lover tell her how they feel over an exhilarating synth beat. She channels Nine Inch Nails on the industrial pop track “To Know Your Name,” which evokes a more subdued “Me Against the Music.” There’s a catchy simplicity to “Magnet,” where she compares the pull of a lover to the refrigerator adornments. “Is it gravity, chemistry, physically pullin’ me?” she yearns over an ‘80s-tinged backbeat.

While Lohan released her follow-up album with the darker A Little More Personal (Raw) a year later, she ultimately dove further into acting and fashion, straying from music. But in 2019, it seemed that Lohan had resurrected her music career, re-signing with Casablanca Records and dropping “Xanax,” a dance-pop banger about anxiety, on Instagram. (Though it was never officially released, in my bones I feel like it would have been a hit!) By 2020, she made her official return with the infectious self-love anthem “Back To Me,” with the promise of an album.

The Lohanaissance, it seemed, was upon us. She earned a multi-film deal with Netflix and became the ultimate rom-com “it girl” once again. And while there hasn’t been a new album, she did give us a sprinkling of music with a spin on “Jingle Bell Rock” from her 2022 film Falling For Christmas. There is also the promise of more Pink Slip songs in Freakier Friday. I, for one, will never stop hoping for another full-length Lohan record a la Speak because it crystallized the chaos of celebrity culture in the early aughts with excess, drama, and heartbreak only an “it girl” navigating the magnifying glass of Hollywood could comprehend.