Hilary Duff is a pop star once more. That is, if a pop star ever really stops being a pop star.
Over 10 years since her last record — 2015’s “Breathe In. Breathe Out.” — Duff is back with “Luck… or Something,” a witty, and glittery, set of 11 pop songs that track the years that have passed since her teenage stardom. That brings existential questions, haunting what-ifs, some self-deprecating reflection and a healthy dose of cringe and nostalgia.
Once a Disney Channel darling known best for playing the sometimes-illustrated middle schooler Lizzie McGuire, Duff is now 38 and married with four kids. There’s been a perspective shift since she was making shimmery dance-pop and angsty breakup tunes in the early 2000s (think: “What Dreams Are Made Of,” “Come Clean,” “So Yesterday”). “Mature,” the album’s lead single, makes that clear with cutting lyrics that recall an unfortunately familiar dynamic, between a young woman and an older man: “Bet she loves when she hears you say / You’re so mature for your age, babe.” As present-day Duff reminisces, she’s making it clear to the listener that she is older and wiser — but also forgiving of her younger self.
That’s because nostalgia is still key here, and Duff is well aware of that. Her return to the pop stage was launched with a mini-tour that saw her preview some of these new songs alongside those old hits to the delight of fans in Toronto, London, New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Her promotional videos have featured old costumes, props and flip phones. For the cover of this month’s Glamour magazine, Duff peered over her shoulder from the back of a moped — an image fans were quick to connect to 2003’s Italy-set “The Lizzie McGuire Movie.”
The album, like her overall relaunch, attempts to balance this nostalgia with that perspective. Matthew Koma, Duff’s husband and a songwriter and producer who’s worked with pop artists including Pink, Carly Rae Jepsen and Britney Spears, produces and writes across the project, which employs engaging but synth-heavy beats across the tracks.
On album opener “Weather For Tennis,” Duff contemplate arguments. The lyrics, simple but multisyllabic tongue-twisters like, “You calling me bats—’s / The fastest antibiotic for thinking / You’re different this time,” don’t feel far off, spiritually, from the zingers of her earlier radio hits. Muffled drums give “Holiday Party,” about a partner’s imagined affair, a darker clubby beat, while booming drums and claps make “Future Tripping,” about needing a partner’s grounding abilities, bubbly. Laughs and dialogue layered into the track put the listener in the room with Duff, to a charming effect. But “Tell Me That Won’t Happen” has a too-similar conceit, the pace steady while the lyrics spiral through more worries: “Are we 80 years proof? Are we really immune? Will I want something new? Will you want something new?”
Still, the tracks are accessible and catchy, the lyrics reliant on simple vocabulary that makes them feel like gossip or worries shared among friends (see Duff’s ode to chosen family, “Growing Up”). That closeness, built by fans’ nostalgia and Duff’s accessible, laid-back, adult persona, is her not-so-secret weapon. Onstage this winter, Duff mimicked a dance that went viral after a 2007 performance of her song “With Love,” pulling fans up to dance with her. Winking at that past, probably more self-conscious version of her pop star self, she acknowledges that she’s grown — without distancing the fans that grew up with her. That self-awareness can make even the cheesiest of lyrics — “Your kinda freak matched my kinda freak” or “Do I nail you to a cross on some bogus s—” — endearing.
“The Optimist” takes a turn sonically, describing Duff’s relationship with her father. Duff sings in a higher and softer register, while a lap steel adds a country lilt to the track. It’s a needed tonal change on the record — and a reminder that Duff is still chameleonic, like Disney and her earliest record deals trained her to be — but the sound and lyrical vocabulary feels copy-pasted from the likes of Kacey Musgraves, instead of singularly Duff.
On “You, From The Honeymoon,” Duff remembers being 23: “At 23 in Rockaway Beach / Too young to be too existential.” Fifteen years later, existential pop is in. And despite the anxieties, fraught memories and tested relationships she’s writing about, Duff is clearly having fun making it.
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“Luck…or something” by Hilary Duff
Two and a half stars out of five.
On repeat: “Mature,” “We Don’t Talk”
Skip it: “Tell Me That Won’t Happen,” “Adult Size Medium”
For fans of: Comeback arcs, Disney Channel original movies, existential pop
