Lohan Too Queasy for "Live"

After pulling out of a television appearance at the last minute on Tuesday, Lindsay Lohan has been busy making confessions of an upset stomach.

The teenage drama queen was a no-show for her scheduled gig on Live with Regis and Kelly, a development that was announced to the hosts five minutes after the program had started.

Lohan pleaded food poisoning, perhaps contracted at the glitzy King Kong premiere she attended the previous night.

"Lindsay Lohan is sick. She's not coming," Regis Philbin said on the air, after learning that his guest would not be arriving as planned. "Well, that's kind of a blow."

Live went on to fill its empty airspace with an interview and performance by Ashanti.

Though Lohan wasn't able to make the early morning show, the Mean Girls star did put in an appearance on MTV's TRL later in the day to celebrate Tuesday's release of her new album, A Little More Personal (Raw).

Lohan continued her media blitz on Wednesday with an appearance on Access Hollywood, during which she explained away her Live absence, saying, "I had some food poisoning, which wasn't really fun."

She sent her apologies to Philbin and his cohost, Kelly Ripa, saying, "I know it came across really bad...I'll make it up to you, I swear!"

After a year in which endless headlines were devoted to the 19-year-old singer-actress' drastic weight loss, which was alternately rumored to be due to drug use or an eating disorder, (both of which she has denied), Lohan claims she has matured and learned to take better care of herself.

"I was just working, working, working, and tired and going out with my friends in the wrong way when I should have been resting," Lohan told the Associated Press. "I knew that, but I needed to learn it for myself instead of just everybody telling me that."

Her second album is something of a departure from the light dance-pop tunes that characterized her first effort, 2004's Speak, and includes the semi-autobiographical single "Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)," about a daughter's abandonment by her dad.

"I do still have the younger fan base, and I want them to be able to relate to some lighter songs, but I want to grow with my fans and I've been trying to do that for so long," Lohan told the AP. "I've just grown up really fast, and I'm thankful for that."

Some critics seem to agree that Lohan has grown up, at least as a musician. The New York Times called her second album "a louder, better follow-up" to Speak and opined that "Ms. Lohan has staked out a patch of musical ground between Kelly Clarkson and the Foo Fighters, and she can snarl a little without laying it on too thick."

USA Today also complimented Lohan's latest effort, claiming the album "delivers meticulously crafted rock candy designed to present the teen movie and pop idol as an edgier, more mature artist."

However, not all of the reviews offered positive feedback.

Rolling Stone wrote that the popster "sounds like a high school talent-show winner" and that she made a "fatal mistake" by trying to "like, express herself" on the album, while Newsday opined that her first single is a "screeching, overwrought mess" and that Lohan would be better off expressing herself through talking because "[t]he singing thing isn't really working out."

Even if her foray into pop doesn't work out (unlikely, given that her first album went platinum and the second is currently rocketing up the charts), Lohan still has a thriving acting career to fall back on.

She stars in the upcoming comedies Just My Luck and A Prairie Home Companion, and recently wrapped shooting on Bobby, Emilio Estevez's depiction of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

Lohan is also set to star in the independent film Chapter 27, about the 1980 assassination of John Lennon. Shooting is expected to begin early next year.