The Pop Corporation

Fun, wholesome albums are hard to get behind a lot of the time, because they can sound insincere and wishy-washy in an environment where pop is required to be overtly sexy or have some kind of grievance. However, with Hilary Duff’s new album, she’s super easy to root for. She’s embraced the memes, she’s nostalgia for young people, and this is a very pleasant comeback indeed.

On ‘Luck… Or Something?’, we find that Duff is making pop music because she loves pop music – this is an important point to make, because you can’t accuse this new run of songs of cynicism – it’s sugary and delivered with a lightness of touch that is genuinely lovely to have wash over you.

That all said, she’s a grown woman now, so you’d be foolish to expect her not to have something to say. With that in mind, you press play and you’re greeted with one of the most arresting opening lines on a pop album we can remember, when she sweetly sings “I’m a seasoned apologist for the people who I love.”

From the word go, you’re reminded (in no bad way) of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Emotion’ album, which managed to convince the achingly hip set to love glittery pop music music again, and sincerely, Duff could well do the same for this year’s class of cool, who knows?

After the intense Lily Allen comeback, where we had to wrestle with different types of problematic behaviour past-and-present, there’s no such baggage with Duff, who does have some chips on her shoulder – but the way it is delivered here is subtly powerful, rather than someone airing their dirty knickers.

To that point, the centrepiece of the album is the light but biting ‘Mature’, which takes aim at the skeezy guys who date young women. She sees herself in these girls too, offering caution from (presumably) the kind of men who litter the entertainment business, and given that as a young star aged 16, she was dating someone a decade older, could well be reading someone in particular for filth.

There’s so many killer lines in the song, we were tempted to paste the whole thing into this review. From “going down on her on your vintage rug – bet she’s so impressed by your Basquiat” to “she looks like all of your girls but blonder – a little like me, just younger – bet she loves when she hears you say; “you’re so mature for your age, babe”, there’ll be a few men who should be squirming at these lines.

There’s one section however, that feels so specific, that you wonder if it’s aimed at one man: “watched the tide rise up as high as you got on me, listening to ‘Strawberry Letter 23’. Hid my car at Carbon Beach so I wasn’t seen at yours.”

Zoinks!

The shimmering synths and hooky melodies from the Lizzie McGuire star underpin a record that’s deceptively heavy lyrically, so what we’re treated to is an album that isn’t lumping you over the head with what it needs to say, but instead, one that diffuses through you and hit a little deeper. It feels like the difference between listening to gossip and genuine growth.

She’d said in an interview preceding the record that this was all “quite serious” but with “pop all the way” and that’s the truth of the matter.

This feels like a perfect little LP for Millennials – if Miley can revive Hannah Montana for it’s 20th anniversary, the Jonas Brothers can go back on tour, Mean Girls has a musical, and ‘Freakier Friday’ exists, then why can’t Hilary Duff make an album that leans on that nostalgia, but crucially, shows that the person at the centre of it has grown up with her fanbase too?

Sure, there’s lyrical tics that sound a little like Instagram self-help accounts and whatnot, but overall, the charm and optimism of the album is what really wins out. Will this record change your life? Probably not – but is there enough meat on the bones to make you want to dance and even feel a bit seen? You bet.