Among the pop news that the summer has left, we cannot fail to comment on the announced return of Hilary Duff to music. Duff, who during her career has performed hits so beloved by a generation such as ‘Come Clean’ or ‘So Yesterday’, both of course associated with her post-‘Lizzy McGuire’ teenage period, has not released an album for no less than a decade.
Of course, Duff’s recent projects have been more film and television related. Especially commented was his participation in ‘How I Met Your Father’, which lasted two seasons. He is currently preparing the series ‘Pretty Ugly’ for Hulu. The ‘Lizzy McGuire’ remake was scrapped at the end of 2020 due to “creative differences.”
I was never a fan of Hilary Duff as a pop artist (yes, of ‘Lizzy McGuire’, an iconic teen series), basically because her phenomenon came a little late for my age. Let’s say that, when she released her first album in 2003, Britney Spears was already going for ‘In the Zone’. And by the time ‘Dignity’ (2007) came out, I was beginning to immerse myself in the alternative world.
However, ‘Breathe In. Breathe Out’, Duff’s 2015 album, was very good in its style – much better than it was painted -, and in these ten years I have never stopped listening to songs as cool as ‘Sparks’, ‘Tattoo’ (co-written by Ed Sheeran) or ‘Night Like This’. Note that my favorite song was the bonus track ‘Belong’: I must have listened to it thousands of times. Perhaps, in pop years, the album was a little late to some trends (the whistle, the banjo), but the songs were irresistible.
That’s why it’s good news that Duff has signed with Atlantic Records and is preparing new music. In addition, a docuseries will be filmed about this return. In the poptimist world we live in, even Rolling Stone has dedicated an article to his comeback as if he were, I don’t know, Frank Ocean. But the truth is that Duff has a few pop anthems under her belt and she was never as bad (I always loved her Valley Girl voice) or as expendable as so many media outlets that despised or ignored her wanted to make us believe.
Duff has homework if she wants to make herself known in today’s TikTok world: recently, Doja Cat sang ‘Come Clean’ at a concert in the United Kingdom and lamented that no one knew the song. His face was a poem.
It’s not that TikTok doesn’t know her at all: her funny viral choreographies, like the one on the Today Show that gave less than Dua Lipa – and that Duff herself recreated on TikTok -, or that vocal run from the ‘Lizzy McGuire’ movie, have been shared and parodied dozens of times in recent years. But Duff must prove that she is also an artist to be taken seriously: bops like ‘Beat of My Heart’, ‘Fly’, ‘With Love’ or ‘Stranger’ would not have been the same without her.
@hilaryduff #duet with @yungdaddycack ♬ original sound – Devin Santiago
@much #DojaCat sang “Come Clean” by #HilaryDuff ♬ original sound – MuchMusic
