Emmy Rossum, stop trying so hard. We like you. You're an incredibly talented actress, you have a lovely singing voice, and you're drop-dead gorgeous. You do not need to prove yourself to us, so quit it — or you could become the next Anne Hathaway (and not in a good way).

Hathaway is also all of those things — gorgeous, successful, talented — but somehow sparks a rage in otherwise rational people who claim to hate her with a fiery passion despite her not actually doing anything terrible to earn said disdain (except for maybe the mic-hogging at the Golden Globes, that was bad). Emmy, do you want to be irrationally hated by millions? Of course, Hathaway's all but a lock to win an Oscar this year, so maybe you do want that...

Rossum's new album, Sentimental Journey, hits stores on Tuesday, Jan. 29. It's a collection of the multi-hyphenate starlet singing classic tunes from the '20s through the '60s; it is also not very good. (You can listen to it here.) Rossum's voice is perfectly pleasant (she was a child opera singer at the Met, after all), and the songs are perfectly fine — classic, even. But why does this album exist, other than to remind us that Rossum can carry a tune and she looks amazing decked out in '40s pin curls? Instead of displaying her talents, it comes across as another plea for attention from the annoying, overachieving theater girl in your high school.

Rossum has come so very close to breaking out as an A-list actress, but something keeps preventing her from earning that status. She's starred in a big-budget blockbuster (The Day After Tomorrow), a hit movie musical (The Phantom of the Opera), the upcoming sure-to-be-hit YA adaptation Beautiful Creatures, and is so good on her critically acclaimed Showtime drama Shameless that she outshines William H. Macy. When your talent is overshadowing Bill Freakin' Macy and you're only 26 years old, you can cool it with the ambitious side projects. You can stop taking yourself so seriously.

Before you rush to the comments, yes, I am incredibly jealous of all of her attributes — who wouldn't be? But the reason I point this out is because I like Rossum. She should be a bigger star, and it just feels like she's getting in her own way. I mean, look at that album cover. Come on! It feels like she made this album because she can, not because she had some burning passion to record an LP of not-quite-standards. Why not save that creative energy for something that will actually make a mark on the world?


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