Let’s go back to the beginning… back when Hilary Duff didn’t know just how much her bubblegum-pop smash Metamorphosis would mean to teen fans when she released it in 2003. She admitted as much last month in an Instagram post celebrating the album’s 22nd anniversary. “I was embarking on something I had no idea would make such an impact on people’s lives, and mine… It sure as hell also landed on people at the right moment in time,” she wrote. “Although these are distant memories for me, thank you for showing up the way that you did.” Now, with the news that Duff has signed to Atlantic Records, and is set to release new music for the first time since 2015’s wildly underrated Breathe In, Breathe Out, those fans are embracing the multi-hyphenate’s return with the same passion.
A quick scroll through the post comments shows literally everyone from major corporations like Starbucks and Barbie to musicians like Julia Michaels and Dinah Jane celebrating the singer — and excited for a comeback. Some fans even left heartfelt comments detailing how much Duff’s music meant to them. “You raised me while my parents were failing at it lol and that ALBUM, was ABSOLUTE LIFE FOR ME as a depressed teenager. Thank you,” read one. Journalist Tori Kravitz wrote, “You were the first artist who made me a FAN of music. The first concert I ever went to. Today I am a professional music journalist and publicist. So thank you for sparking this in me.”
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This excitement translated into streaming, too. Just a couple days after Duff shared the news, fans couldn’t get enough of Duff’s catalog, from the soaring pop rock of her 2004 self-titled LP to the dark-tinged dance pop of 2007’s Dignity. As Rolling Stone reported, Spotify saw massive streaming growth across the singer’s four studio albums: U.S. streams on Spotify jumped nearly 80 percent, while first-time listeners rose by 75 percent.
Unsurprisingly, millennials were the largest group of listeners behind all those streams. Duff’s return is what a millennial’s dreams are made of, after all. Her sugary, Matrix-produced romps evoke the era of flip phones and Limited Too, when the singer’s music soundtracked both MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 and Laguna Beach. Each song is like a capsule to a simpler time, filled with the kind of relentless optimism only Duff could deliver. In this day and age, who wouldn’t want to escape to the past for a little bit?
While millennial nostalgia plays a huge factor in welcoming Duff’s comeback with open hearts, the multi-hyphenate’s appeal extends far beyond that. She won over audiences when she played the quirky, clumsy Lizzie McGuire on Disney Channel. Young viewers could see that Lizzie wasn’t all that different from Hilary, a fun-loving girl from Texas who just happened to be an actor. Duff’s good-natured humor, eclectic style and undeniable charm made you want to be her best friend — and her girl-next-door energy made that wish seem possible. It’s no wonder she became a role model for her fanbase of young women, and a blueprint for a whole generation of mega Disney stars like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Olivia Rodrigo, and Sabrina Carpenter. (Both Cyrus and Carpenter have acknowledged Duff’s impact on their careers — and on pop culture.)
Audiences may have fallen in love with Duff through the screen, but once she spread her wings and launched her music career, fans were eager to catch her concerts and learn the words to all of her songs. It helped that Duff and her team embedded her music releases into her acting projects. From “Anywhere But Here” on the A Cinderella Story soundtrack to “Someone’s Watching Over Me” being a major plot point in Raise Your Voice, the star straddled both of her pursuits in fabulous fashion. Sure, it all may have been genius marketing from Hollywood Records and the Disney machine, but Duff was the one that really sold it.
Staying true to her relatable roots, Duff also made behind-the-scenes looks at her musical creative process a signature move. She released an All Access Pass documentary when Metamorphosis came out, and the Learning to Fly one for her self-titled album. For Dignity, she leveled up with the two-part docuseries Hilary Duff: This Is Now. While Breathe In, Breathe Out didn’t have an official longform peak behind the curtain, the “My Kind” music video follows the singer as she preps for the album with vocal and dance rehearsals. Given all this, it’s totally on-brand for Duff to star in yet another docuseries detailing her return. This newest one is shaping up to be her strongest one yet, in part because of director Sam Wrench, who recently worked on Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter.
Much like Metamorphosis arrived in the early aughts’ sparkly daze, Duff’s musical comeback also comes at the right moment in time. This summer went by without a definitive song of the season; meanwhile, the charts are filled with music most people haven’t heard in real life. So, again for good measure, thank god Hilary is back in the music industry. May she make everything Technicolor once more.
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