Aly and AJ

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Don't think these girls are merely puppets in the Disney corporate machine. The teen pop duo, Aly & AJ, wrote all but two tracks on their debut album Into the Rush. (Their versions of Do You Believe in Magic and Walking on Sunshine were featured in the hit movies Now You See It and Herbie: Fully Loaded respectively). Aly and AJ -- whose full names are Alyson and Amanda Joy Michalka -- showed a passion for both kinds of performing at a very young age: they started playing piano at age six and began acting classes soon after. Born in L.A., the Michalkas moved to Seattle in the early '90s, where their parents exposed them to a wide variety of music and supported their excitement about both acting and making music. As the girls learned piano and guitar, they also landed acting and modeling gigs, which prepared them to pursue both careers more seriously once the family returned to southern California. "Aly and I are good listeners," says AJ. "We take things in and observe whats going on around us. We call songwriting lyrical poetry. We want people of all ages to relate to the subjects." The kidnapping of a young Florida girl from a car wash spurred AJ and Aly to pen 'I Am One of Them,' as a creative way to raise public awareness of child safety. To that end, Aly and AJ have become active in promotion Amber Alerts and legislation to get predators off the streets. Aly and AJ are also now the co-Chairs of the Children's Advisory Board for the AmberWatch Foundation. "We just want to remind kids and adults without scaring them," says Aly. "We're trying to prevent this sort of thing from happening by teaching kids to make wise choices, to be aware of their surroundings. We really feel vulnerable, because it could happen to any of us." "We want to be real, genuine, to express the way we honestly feel, and let that come out in our music," adds AJ. "AJ and I want to be a voice and accountable for the message in our music, what were supporting and writing about," say Aly. "We stand for what we say. We won't back down from that. We're always going to write from a genuine place in our hearts. If you don't do that, you can get lost." You can also find Aly on television as Keely Teslow in the hit Disney Channel series, Phil of the Future, which allows her to sing and act, while AJ has had guest spots on Six Feel Under, Oliver Beene, and Birds of Prey, and regular roles on CBS The Guardian and the classic soap opera General Hospital. The siblings filmed their first movie together, the Disney Channel original film, Cow Belles, which premiered in March 2006.