Hilary Duff (album)
Encyclopedia
Hilary Duff is the eponym
ous third studio album
by American recording artist Hilary Duff
. The album was released on September 28, 2004 by Hollywood Records
as a follow up to the internationally successful, Metamorphosis
(2003). Duff cited the album as being more mature than her previous, stating "Basically, I'm not Lizzie McGuire
anymore". The seventeen-track album saw Duff collaborating with the same producers she did on Metamorphosis, saying that it was more comfortable for her that way. Recording sessions for the album took place during May to August 2004, partially between filming of Raise Your Voice
(2004) and The Perfect Man
(2005), both in which Duff had starring roles.
It receive generally negative reviews from music credits, many of whom compared to the music of Avril Lavigne
and Ashlee Simpson
. The album, debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200
chart, selling 192,000 copies in its first week. To date, Hilary Duff has sold, 1,800,000 copies in the U.S. It became her second consecutive number one debut in Canada
and produced two singles that were not major hits. It was eventually certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA). Hilary Duff was number sixty-five on Billboard magazine's year-end top albums chart in November 2005.
The lead single from Hilary Duff, "Fly
" pemiered on August 26, 2004 on MTV's Total Request Live. The song was officially released as a single on October 19, 2004, it peaked outside the top twenty on the Billboard Top 40 Mainstream chart but failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100
. "Fly" was the only single released in the United States. The second Australian single, "Someone's Watching Over Me
" was released on February 21, 2005 to promote the film Raise Your Voice
, achieving moderated success; only charting at number 22 on the ARIA
Singles Chart
.
anymore", she said. She said the album deals with issues she would not discuss publicly and provides "some answers", but she disagreed with people who believed the album presented a different side of her, saying "I think it's just more me this time because I got to really do it how I wanted to." Duff called the album "different [from]" Metamorphosis and "much more mature", particularly in its "sound", but not to the point where it would be inappropriate for children; "I just think that other people will relate better", she said. According to her, she was more "involved" compared to the production of her first album and "confident enough to make suggestions" about the style of the album: "If I thought it needed to be more heavy, more rock, I said so". Its U.S. release date, September 28, 2004, was Duff's seventeenth birthday.
Three songs — "Fly", "Someone's Watching over Me" and "Jericho" — were used in Raise Your Voice, a drama film released shortly after the album in which Duff starred as an aspiring singer who attends a prestigious performing arts summer school. Duff has described "Fly" as "an uplifting song" about "how people are scared to open up and show who they are inside because they're afraid of what others are going to say". Her character performs "Someone's Watching over Me" at the film's climax and "Jericho" during the end credits, with the other characters performing the instruments. The album's release in Japan includes three bonus track
s: an acoustic
version of "Who's That Girl?", a cover of The Go-Go's
' "Our Lips Are Sealed
" recorded with Haylie for the soundtrack to Duff's film A Cinderella Story
("We really wanted to work together, and my label knew that, so we found this song and we're like, 'Yes! We have to do this!'", Duff said), and a cover of The Who
's "My Generation" in which the lyric "I hope I die before I get old" was changed to "I hope I don't die before I get old". Duff began performing it in concert after a suggestion from her manager, who was a fan of the song.
Duff herself co-wrote three tracks on the album: "Mr. James Dean", "Haters" and "Rock This World", the first two of which, along with "The Last Song", Haylie co-wrote. Hilary said she refrained from co-writing the entire album because "I don't know if I'm secure enough with myself to do that". She has characterised "Haters" as "tongue-in-cheek" and said people would know what it is about when they heard it, and it attracted substantial publicity when rumors circulated that it was about actress Lindsay Lohan
, with whom Duff was alleged to have been feuding. The Scoop, a gossip section of the website MSNBC
, quoted an insider who had said, "Hilary thinks that Lindsay has been directing negativity at her for too long." Duff denied that the rumors were true, saying she did not know Lohan and would not write a song about her. She said that at the time she wrote it she was feeling she had to openly discuss her personal life because "people make accusations and there are lies and rumors constantly ... people are so negative. They love to read what's coming out next on Page Six [of the New York Post
] and I just felt like it was appropriate." She said she felt "normal girls" could relate to the song because of the "petty stuff" that occurs in schools.
Duff told the Chicago Sun-Times
in 2005 that because she was under the control of a record label during the making of Metamorphosis and Hilary Duff, she wasn't able to incorporate the sound she wanted into her recordings. She said the production "[had] been master
ed and sounds really pretty ... If I could change it, I would, and it would sound [less pop]. My name is Hilary Duff, and I don't know why I don't get to make Hilary Duff music."
and The Perfect Man
, two films in which she was involved. Subsequent songs were recorded on the weekends during filming of The Perfect Man and on the nights after concerts on her Most Wanted Tour. The album's outro track, "The Last Song", was recorded in her dressing room. "It was so ghetto", Duff said of the experience.
When discussion regarding her second album began, Duff said she wanted to work with the same team of producers and songwriters with whom she worked on Metamorphosis. "[They] made me feel so comfortable and so secure with myself. I loved working with them. I have a great relationship with them. I talk to them [all the time] ... They knew what was going on in my life, what I was going through ... and how I feel inside", Duff said. For songs she did not co-write, Duff discussed her experiences and feelings with the writers and ask them to write songs about them. Members of the creative team behind Metamorphosis who returned for Hilary Duff include Charlie Midnight
, John Shanks
and Kara DioGuardi
(who collaborated on the commercially released singles), Andre Recke, Marc Swersky and Duff's sister Haylie
. Hilary said, "I do have a lot to say, and I have a lot going on inside that sometimes is buried and hidden because I'm working so hard, and I don't have time to think about it. But if we sit down and we talk about it and I tell her how I feel and she writes, it'll be good."
Several producers and songwriters who did not contribute to Metamorphosis worked on the album, including Andreas Carlsson
and Desmond Child
("Who's That Girl?"), British songwriter Guy Chambers
("Shine"), Julian Bunetta and James Michael
("The Getaway") and Ty Stevens ("Rock This World"). Ron Entwistle is co-writer and co-producer of "Weird", which Duff said is "about someone that she's still obsessed with. And everything he does is like he says this, but he does this ... She's not really sure who he is or what he does, but she likes it." Kevin De Clue contributed to "The Last Song" and "Mr. James Dean" (both co-produced by Haylie), which Duff has named her favorite track on the album and described as "very funny"; in the song, she tells an ex-boyfriend that he'll "never be James Dean
". Duff neither confirmed nor denied whether the song was about fellow singer Aaron Carter
, and she said "it was definitely an experience that I went through that was interesting and I learned a lot from that time in my life." In "Hide Away", co-produced and co-written by Shaun Shankel
, Duff discusses a relationship that isn't working because she is in a position where her life is "figuratively under the microscope". Diane Warren
wrote "I Am", an empowerment song in which Duff lists positive and negative aspects about herself; she has said it is about being comfortable "with all those feelings ... being who you are".
Duff's management team considered for recording a song titled "Since U Been Gone
", which Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald and Max Martin
had originally written for Pink
. According to Gottwald, Duff's team passed on the song because some of the notes were too high for Duff's voice. "Since U Been Gone" was later recorded by Kelly Clarkson
, for whom it became a major hit.
" was the lead and only single with a music video from the album. It is also the only single released in the US. The music video directed by Chris Applebaum, combines black-and-white backstage footage with color shots of Duff performing the song. The video premiered on MTV's Total Request Live on August 26, 2004.
"Someone's Watching over Me
" was released in Australia as a second single from the album. The music video was the shot from the 2004 movie "Raise Your Voice" where Duff plays the lead role.
Toward the end of 2004, several radio singles were released to promote the album. "The Getaway" was issued in the U.S. in November 2004 and in Canada in January 2005, and "I Am" was released to Radio Disney
in December 2004; shortly after, promotion for "Weird" began in Spain.
, which gave Metamorphosis a negative review, commented positively on the album and said it exemplified "a more wholesome brand of rock-flavored pop aimed at teens". Barnes praised the "unstoppably rousing choruses" in some of the songs and said "Duff avoids overextending her thin but pleasant voice, except for a bit of Avril
esque syllable stretching", while he criticised the high number of tracks and the preponderance of "hackneyed self-affirmation messages". Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine
categorised Hilary Duff as "a virtual companion to Ashlee Simpson
's Autobiography
, from its rock/dance-pop
fusion to its earnest demeanor" and "a varied, ambitious album ... it feels like the soundtrack to the life of a smart, ambitious, popular teenager trying to sort things out".
A review of Hilary Duff in The Village Voice
was far less praising; it said "Duff's role in the tween-rock firmament is playing pious Lisa Loeb
opposite Simpson's post-diluvian Courtney Love
... despite liberal amounts of gold-dust guitar glitter, blow-dried backing vocals, and even the post-crash-Skynyrd
'Rock This World', Hilary Duff is too often the vanilla-bean fantasia AOR
chauvinists take all girl-pop for." Stylus
magazine wrote that Duff's attempt to follow "the [Avril Lavigne] template that she previously softened" yielded "mixed results ... to a certain extent, [she] is a prisoner of her image and her attempts at Chrissie Hynde
-intensity fall far short of even Ashlee Simpson's gravelly vocal cords." Its critic described the album's length as its "simple problem", saying that with "a little quality control ... this could easily be as strong as any other teen-pop album released this year."
In response to Duff's "announcement" that "she's a complicated rock & roll adolescent on the order of Avril and Ashlee", Entertainment Weekly
wrote, "Uh-huh. And Betty
from the Archie
comics is Patti Smith
", noting Duff's "tiny" voice is "buried under layers of generic cheese arrangements." Sal Cinquemani of Slant called the album "a seemingly endless string of three-and-a-half-minute pieces of pop crap – and I like pop music", and wrote that although Duff "can't be held responsible for most of the album's insipid lyrical content", "when [she] gets in on the action things feel contrived". The New York Daily News
named it the worst teen pop album of 2004, saying it was "[n]eck-and-neck for junkiest CD of the year with her arch nemesis, Lindsay Lohan [Speak]".
with 192,000 copies sold in its first week of release, which was lower than the first week sales of Metamorphosis. IGN Music said that partly because of the album's high debut, "at this very moment Hilary Duff is perhaps the reigning queen of bubblegum pop theatrics"; it also said that Duff's image was "undergoing an overhaul" through photo shoots in magazines such as Blender
, possibly making her less "squeaky clean" than her predecessors Christina Aguilera
and Britney Spears
. Unlike Metamorphosis, Hilary Duff went no higher on the Billboard 200, and the RIAA
certified it platinum
a month after its release. Hilary Duff was number 112 on Billboard
magazine's year-end top albums chart in December 2004 and number sixty-five on Billboard magazine's year-end top albums chart in November 2005. in its second week, slipped to No. 6 selling 95,500, down 51% over the first week of release the following week the album continued in No. 6, selling 83,775 and falling 12% over the past week.
The album debuted at number one on the Nielsen SoundScan
chart in Canada, as Metamorphosis had done, and it was released in Australia in October. It debuted in the top ten on the ARIA
album chart, surpassing the top twenty peak of Metamorphosis and rising to its number-six peak position in November. "Fly" was released as a single in the same month and did not perform as well, reaching just outside the top twenty. Duff embarked on a two-date tour of Australia in late October, supported by Popstars
winner Scott Cain
. In Canada, the CRIA
certified the album three times platinum for 300,000 copies.
In February 2005, popdirt.com reported that because of the failure of "Fly" in the U.S., Hollywood Records would not be releasing further singles from the album. The website said that "The Getaway" was planned as the follow-up single in January, but its release was cancelled after sales of the album went into a "sudden drop". Executives at the label decided that money should be invested in a new album – which became Most Wanted
– instead of additional promotion for Hilary Duff, according to the report. Shortly after, Duff fans grouped together to launch the "Hilary Duff Attack Day" Project, a campaign designed to persuade Hollywood Records executives to release another single. Organisers of the campaign, which was endorsed by nearly twenty Duff fansites, instructed fans to buy a copy of the album on April 4 so that the consequent increase in weekly sales would lead to the release of another single. The campaign's online project page said, "The Hilary Duff album has plenty of great songs that would make great singles ... If every fan would buy a CD that day, the sales would increase considerably and we will show the record company that the Hilary Duff CD is amazing, and that another single is in need!" No single was released after the planned "Attack Day". By June 2005, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the album had sold 1.5 million copies in the U.S.; in comparison, Metamorphosis had sold 3.7 million.
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous third studio album
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by American recording artist Hilary Duff
Hilary Duff
Hilary Erhard Duff is an American actress, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur, and author. After working in local theater plays and television commercials in her childhood, she achieved fame playing the title role in the Disney Channel television series Lizzie McGuire. She also reprised her role in...
. The album was released on September 28, 2004 by Hollywood Records
Hollywood Records
Hollywood Records is an American record label owned by Disney Music Group, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company.-History:Hollywood Records was founded in 1989 by then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner with the idea of expanding the music operations of the company and to develop and promote...
as a follow up to the internationally successful, Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis (Hilary Duff album)
Metamorphosis is the second studio album by American recording artist Hilary Duff. Promoted as her debut album, it was released on August 26, 2003 by Buena Vista and Hollywood Records as a follow up to her holiday album, Santa Claus Lane...
(2003). Duff cited the album as being more mature than her previous, stating "Basically, I'm not Lizzie McGuire
Lizzie McGuire
Lizzie McGuire is an American teen sitcom which premiered on the Disney Channel on January 12, 2001 and ended February 14, 2004. A total of 65 episodes were produced and aired. Its target demographic was preteens and adolescents...
anymore". The seventeen-track album saw Duff collaborating with the same producers she did on Metamorphosis, saying that it was more comfortable for her that way. Recording sessions for the album took place during May to August 2004, partially between filming of Raise Your Voice
Raise Your Voice
Raise Your Voice is a 2004 American teen musical drama film directed by Sean McNamara-Plot:Terri Fletcher , a teenager with a passion for singing, has been accepted into a music program in Los Angeles to compete for a $10,000 scholarship shortly after her brother Paul 's tragic death in a car crash...
(2004) and The Perfect Man
The Perfect Man
The Perfect Man is a 2005 romantic comedy film directed by Mark Rosman and written by Gina Wendkos. It stars Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear and Chris Noth. Filming of the movie began in May 2004...
(2005), both in which Duff had starring roles.
It receive generally negative reviews from music credits, many of whom compared to the music of Avril Lavigne
Avril Lavigne
Avril Ramona Lavigne is a Canadian singer-songwriter. She was born in Belleville, Ontario, but spent most of her youth in the small town of Napanee. By the age of 15, she had appeared on stage with Shania Twain; by 16, she had signed a two-album recording contract with Arista Records worth more...
and Ashlee Simpson
Ashlee Simpson
Ashlee Nicole Simpson is an American singer and actress. In 2004, she rose to prominence with the success of her number-one debut album Autobiography and the reality series, The Ashlee Simpson Show. In October 2005, following a North American concert tour and a film appearance, Simpson released...
. The album, debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
chart, selling 192,000 copies in its first week. To date, Hilary Duff has sold, 1,800,000 copies in the U.S. It became her second consecutive number one debut in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and produced two singles that were not major hits. It was eventually certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States...
(RIAA). Hilary Duff was number sixty-five on Billboard magazine's year-end top albums chart in November 2005.
The lead single from Hilary Duff, "Fly
Fly (Hilary Duff song)
"Fly" is a song by American recording artist Hilary Duff. The song was written by Kara DioGuardi and John Shanks, and produced by Shanks for Duff's self-titled third studio album, Hilary Duff . The song received mixed reviews from music critics, comparing the song to her previous single, "Come...
" pemiered on August 26, 2004 on MTV's Total Request Live. The song was officially released as a single on October 19, 2004, it peaked outside the top twenty on the Billboard Top 40 Mainstream chart but failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
. "Fly" was the only single released in the United States. The second Australian single, "Someone's Watching Over Me
Someone's Watching over Me
"Someone's Watching Over Me" is a song by American recording artist Hilary Duff. It was written by Kara DioGuardi and John Shanks, and produced by Shanks for Duff's self-titled third studio album Hilary Duff .-Background and composition:...
" was released on February 21, 2005 to promote the film Raise Your Voice
Raise Your Voice
Raise Your Voice is a 2004 American teen musical drama film directed by Sean McNamara-Plot:Terri Fletcher , a teenager with a passion for singing, has been accepted into a music program in Los Angeles to compete for a $10,000 scholarship shortly after her brother Paul 's tragic death in a car crash...
, achieving moderated success; only charting at number 22 on the ARIA
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956...
Singles Chart
ARIA Charts
The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June...
.
Background and development
According to Duff, the album chronicles her experiences over the year before its release: "some of its good, and some of its bad, and a lot of its, like, a big learning experience", she explained. She expressed an interest in recording lyrically more aggressive material ("Well, I'm not going to be singing about lollipops because I no longer relate to lollipops") than the songs on Metamorphosis (2003) and wanted the album to reflect that, according to her, she is a normal sixteen year-old. "Basically, I'm not Lizzie McGuireLizzie McGuire
Lizzie McGuire is an American teen sitcom which premiered on the Disney Channel on January 12, 2001 and ended February 14, 2004. A total of 65 episodes were produced and aired. Its target demographic was preteens and adolescents...
anymore", she said. She said the album deals with issues she would not discuss publicly and provides "some answers", but she disagreed with people who believed the album presented a different side of her, saying "I think it's just more me this time because I got to really do it how I wanted to." Duff called the album "different [from]" Metamorphosis and "much more mature", particularly in its "sound", but not to the point where it would be inappropriate for children; "I just think that other people will relate better", she said. According to her, she was more "involved" compared to the production of her first album and "confident enough to make suggestions" about the style of the album: "If I thought it needed to be more heavy, more rock, I said so". Its U.S. release date, September 28, 2004, was Duff's seventeenth birthday.
Three songs — "Fly", "Someone's Watching over Me" and "Jericho" — were used in Raise Your Voice, a drama film released shortly after the album in which Duff starred as an aspiring singer who attends a prestigious performing arts summer school. Duff has described "Fly" as "an uplifting song" about "how people are scared to open up and show who they are inside because they're afraid of what others are going to say". Her character performs "Someone's Watching over Me" at the film's climax and "Jericho" during the end credits, with the other characters performing the instruments. The album's release in Japan includes three bonus track
Bonus track
In terms of recorded music, a bonus track is a piece of music which has been included on specific releases or reissues of an album. This is most often done as a promotional device, either as an incentive to customers to purchase albums they might otherwise not, or to repurchase albums they already...
s: an acoustic
Acoustic music
Acoustic music comprises music that solely or primarily uses instruments which produce sound through entirely acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means...
version of "Who's That Girl?", a cover of The Go-Go's
The Go-Go's
The Go-Go’s are an all-female American rock band formed in 1978. They made history as the first all-female band that both wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to top the Billboard album charts....
' "Our Lips Are Sealed
Our Lips Are Sealed
"Our Lips are Sealed" is a song written by Go-Go's guitarist Jane Wiedlin and Specials and Fun Boy Three singer Terry Hall. It was first recorded by The Go-Go's as the opening track on their 1981 album Beauty and the Beat and served as their debut American single...
" recorded with Haylie for the soundtrack to Duff's film A Cinderella Story
A Cinderella Story
A Cinderella Story is a 2004 American romantic comedy film. The film stars Hilary Duff, Jennifer Coolidge, Chad Michael Murray and Regina King and was directed by Mark Rosman. The film's plot revolves around two Internet pen pals who meet at a school dance and fall in love but two different worlds...
("We really wanted to work together, and my label knew that, so we found this song and we're like, 'Yes! We have to do this!'", Duff said), and a cover of The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
's "My Generation" in which the lyric "I hope I die before I get old" was changed to "I hope I don't die before I get old". Duff began performing it in concert after a suggestion from her manager, who was a fan of the song.
Duff herself co-wrote three tracks on the album: "Mr. James Dean", "Haters" and "Rock This World", the first two of which, along with "The Last Song", Haylie co-wrote. Hilary said she refrained from co-writing the entire album because "I don't know if I'm secure enough with myself to do that". She has characterised "Haters" as "tongue-in-cheek" and said people would know what it is about when they heard it, and it attracted substantial publicity when rumors circulated that it was about actress Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan is an American actress, pop singer and model. She began her career as a child fashion model before making her motion picture debut in Disney's 1998 remake of The Parent Trap at the age of 11...
, with whom Duff was alleged to have been feuding. The Scoop, a gossip section of the website MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
, quoted an insider who had said, "Hilary thinks that Lindsay has been directing negativity at her for too long." Duff denied that the rumors were true, saying she did not know Lohan and would not write a song about her. She said that at the time she wrote it she was feeling she had to openly discuss her personal life because "people make accusations and there are lies and rumors constantly ... people are so negative. They love to read what's coming out next on Page Six [of the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
] and I just felt like it was appropriate." She said she felt "normal girls" could relate to the song because of the "petty stuff" that occurs in schools.
Duff told the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
in 2005 that because she was under the control of a record label during the making of Metamorphosis and Hilary Duff, she wasn't able to incorporate the sound she wanted into her recordings. She said the production "[had] been master
Audio mastering
Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
ed and sounds really pretty ... If I could change it, I would, and it would sound [less pop]. My name is Hilary Duff, and I don't know why I don't get to make Hilary Duff music."
Recording and production
Duff recorded the first three songs for the album between the shooting dates of Raise Your VoiceRaise Your Voice
Raise Your Voice is a 2004 American teen musical drama film directed by Sean McNamara-Plot:Terri Fletcher , a teenager with a passion for singing, has been accepted into a music program in Los Angeles to compete for a $10,000 scholarship shortly after her brother Paul 's tragic death in a car crash...
and The Perfect Man
The Perfect Man
The Perfect Man is a 2005 romantic comedy film directed by Mark Rosman and written by Gina Wendkos. It stars Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear and Chris Noth. Filming of the movie began in May 2004...
, two films in which she was involved. Subsequent songs were recorded on the weekends during filming of The Perfect Man and on the nights after concerts on her Most Wanted Tour. The album's outro track, "The Last Song", was recorded in her dressing room. "It was so ghetto", Duff said of the experience.
When discussion regarding her second album began, Duff said she wanted to work with the same team of producers and songwriters with whom she worked on Metamorphosis. "[They] made me feel so comfortable and so secure with myself. I loved working with them. I have a great relationship with them. I talk to them [all the time] ... They knew what was going on in my life, what I was going through ... and how I feel inside", Duff said. For songs she did not co-write, Duff discussed her experiences and feelings with the writers and ask them to write songs about them. Members of the creative team behind Metamorphosis who returned for Hilary Duff include Charlie Midnight
Charlie Midnight
Charlie Midnight is an American songwriter and record producer who has been nominated for a Grammy Award , two Golden Globe Awards; and has been a producer and/or writer on several Grammy-winning albums, including:The Bodyguard Soundtrack Album ; Turbulent Indigo Charlie Midnight is an American...
, John Shanks
John Shanks
John Matthew Shanks is a modern rock writer and Grammy Award–winning producer.Born in New York City, Shanks moved to Los Angeles when he was 17....
and Kara DioGuardi
Kara DioGuardi
Kara Elizabeth DioGuardi is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, music publisher, A&R executive, composer and TV personality. She writes music primarily in the light pop-rock, dance, and R&B genres. DioGuardi has worked with many popular artists; her songs have appeared on more than 159...
(who collaborated on the commercially released singles), Andre Recke, Marc Swersky and Duff's sister Haylie
Haylie Duff
Haylie Katherine Duff is an American actress and singer-songwriter. She is the older sister of actress and singer Hilary Duff...
. Hilary said, "I do have a lot to say, and I have a lot going on inside that sometimes is buried and hidden because I'm working so hard, and I don't have time to think about it. But if we sit down and we talk about it and I tell her how I feel and she writes, it'll be good."
Several producers and songwriters who did not contribute to Metamorphosis worked on the album, including Andreas Carlsson
Andreas Carlsson
Andreas Carlsson is a Swedish music producer, composer, and pop songwriter.-Biography:Carlsson was part of the Cheiron Studios team until the studio was closed down in 2001....
and Desmond Child
Desmond Child
Desmond Child is an American musician, songwriter, and producer. He is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.-Career:...
("Who's That Girl?"), British songwriter Guy Chambers
Guy Chambers
Guy Chambers is an English songwriter and record producer, perhaps best known for his long partnership with Robbie Williams.- Biography :...
("Shine"), Julian Bunetta and James Michael
James Michael
James Andrew Michael is an American record producer, songwriter, engineer, mixer, vocalist and musician. He is currently the lead singer of the rock band Sixx:A.M.-Early life:...
("The Getaway") and Ty Stevens ("Rock This World"). Ron Entwistle is co-writer and co-producer of "Weird", which Duff said is "about someone that she's still obsessed with. And everything he does is like he says this, but he does this ... She's not really sure who he is or what he does, but she likes it." Kevin De Clue contributed to "The Last Song" and "Mr. James Dean" (both co-produced by Haylie), which Duff has named her favorite track on the album and described as "very funny"; in the song, she tells an ex-boyfriend that he'll "never be James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
". Duff neither confirmed nor denied whether the song was about fellow singer Aaron Carter
Aaron Carter
Aaron Charles Carter is an American singer. He came to fame as a pop and hip hop singer in the late 1990s, establishing himself as a star among pre-teen and teenage audiences during the early-first decade of the 21st century....
, and she said "it was definitely an experience that I went through that was interesting and I learned a lot from that time in my life." In "Hide Away", co-produced and co-written by Shaun Shankel
Shaun Shankel
Shaun Shankel is an American Grammy nominated, Dove Award songwriter and record producer, who has written and produced for some of the biggest selling artists in the Christian and pop music markets, selling over seven million albums and singles...
, Duff discusses a relationship that isn't working because she is in a position where her life is "figuratively under the microscope". Diane Warren
Diane Warren
Diane Eve Warren , is a US songwriter. Her songs have received six Academy Award nominations, five Golden Globe nominations, including one win and seven Grammy Award nominations, including one win. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001...
wrote "I Am", an empowerment song in which Duff lists positive and negative aspects about herself; she has said it is about being comfortable "with all those feelings ... being who you are".
Duff's management team considered for recording a song titled "Since U Been Gone
Since U Been Gone
"Since U Been Gone" is a song written and produced by Max Martin and Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald for American singer Kelly Clarkson. The song was released as the second single from her second album, Breakaway in the US and Australia and was released as the first single in Europe...
", which Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald and Max Martin
Max Martin
Martin Karl Sandberg, known professionally as Max Martin, is a Swedish music producer and songwriter. Raised in Stenhamra, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, he broke through as a producer and songwriter in the mid to late 1990s after crafting a string of hits for pop artists like the Backstreet Boys,...
had originally written for Pink
Pink (singer)
Alecia Beth Moore , better known by her stage name Pink , is an American singer-songwriter, musician and actress....
. According to Gottwald, Duff's team passed on the song because some of the notes were too high for Duff's voice. "Since U Been Gone" was later recorded by Kelly Clarkson
Kelly Clarkson
Kelly Brianne Clarkson is an American pop rock singer-songwriter and actress. Clarkson came into prominence after becoming the winner of the inaugural season of the television series American Idol in 2002 and would later become the runner-up in the television special World Idol in 2003.In 2003,...
, for whom it became a major hit.
Marketing and promotion
Duff embarked on a concert tour of North America, and several of her shows in Canada sold out in minutes.Singles
"FlyFly (Hilary Duff song)
"Fly" is a song by American recording artist Hilary Duff. The song was written by Kara DioGuardi and John Shanks, and produced by Shanks for Duff's self-titled third studio album, Hilary Duff . The song received mixed reviews from music critics, comparing the song to her previous single, "Come...
" was the lead and only single with a music video from the album. It is also the only single released in the US. The music video directed by Chris Applebaum, combines black-and-white backstage footage with color shots of Duff performing the song. The video premiered on MTV's Total Request Live on August 26, 2004.
"Someone's Watching over Me
Someone's Watching over Me
"Someone's Watching Over Me" is a song by American recording artist Hilary Duff. It was written by Kara DioGuardi and John Shanks, and produced by Shanks for Duff's self-titled third studio album Hilary Duff .-Background and composition:...
" was released in Australia as a second single from the album. The music video was the shot from the 2004 movie "Raise Your Voice" where Duff plays the lead role.
Other notable songs
Duff said during the time the album was released that she was considering "Haters" as the second single, but she later changed her mind and decided she wanted "Weird" to become the next single.Toward the end of 2004, several radio singles were released to promote the album. "The Getaway" was issued in the U.S. in November 2004 and in Canada in January 2005, and "I Am" was released to Radio Disney
Radio Disney
Radio Disney is a radio network based in Burbank, California and headquartered out of the Disney Channel headquarters on West Alameda Ave., from where it has been based since November 2008. Prior to that, the network was based in Dallas, Texas...
in December 2004; shortly after, promotion for "Weird" began in Spain.
Critical response
Reviews were mixed to negative. Ken Barnes of USA TodayUSA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, which gave Metamorphosis a negative review, commented positively on the album and said it exemplified "a more wholesome brand of rock-flavored pop aimed at teens". Barnes praised the "unstoppably rousing choruses" in some of the songs and said "Duff avoids overextending her thin but pleasant voice, except for a bit of Avril
Avril Lavigne
Avril Ramona Lavigne is a Canadian singer-songwriter. She was born in Belleville, Ontario, but spent most of her youth in the small town of Napanee. By the age of 15, she had appeared on stage with Shania Twain; by 16, she had signed a two-album recording contract with Arista Records worth more...
esque syllable stretching", while he criticised the high number of tracks and the preponderance of "hackneyed self-affirmation messages". Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine is a senior editor for Allmusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for Allmusic, as well as a freelance writer, occasionally contributing liner notes. He is also frontman and guitarist for the Ann Arbor-based band Who Dat?Erlewine is the nephew...
categorised Hilary Duff as "a virtual companion to Ashlee Simpson
Ashlee Simpson
Ashlee Nicole Simpson is an American singer and actress. In 2004, she rose to prominence with the success of her number-one debut album Autobiography and the reality series, The Ashlee Simpson Show. In October 2005, following a North American concert tour and a film appearance, Simpson released...
's Autobiography
Autobiography (Ashlee Simpson album)
Autobiography is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Ashlee Simpson. Released in the United States by Geffen Records on July 20, 2004, the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and was certified triple platinum in the U.S. Musically, it combines elements of rock and pop....
, from its rock/dance-pop
Dance-pop
Dance-pop is dance-oriented pop music that originated in the early 1980s. Developing from post-disco, it is generally up-tempo music intended for clubs with the intention of being danceable or merely dancey...
fusion to its earnest demeanor" and "a varied, ambitious album ... it feels like the soundtrack to the life of a smart, ambitious, popular teenager trying to sort things out".
A review of Hilary Duff in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
was far less praising; it said "Duff's role in the tween-rock firmament is playing pious Lisa Loeb
Lisa Loeb
Lisa Anne Loeb is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She launched her career in 1994 with the song, "Stay ". She was the first artist to have a number one single in the United States while not signed to a recording contract.Loeb's efforts now include music, film, television, voice-over...
opposite Simpson's post-diluvian Courtney Love
Courtney Love
Courtney Michelle Love is an American rock musician. Love is the lead vocalist, lyricist, and rhythm guitarist for alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989, and is an actress who has moved from bit parts in Alex Cox films to significant and acclaimed roles in The People vs...
... despite liberal amounts of gold-dust guitar glitter, blow-dried backing vocals, and even the post-crash-Skynyrd
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Lynyrd Skynyrd is an American rock band prominent in spreading Southern Rock during the 1970s.Originally formed as the "Noble Five" in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1964, the band rose to worldwide recognition on the basis of its driving live performances and signature tune, Freebird...
'Rock This World', Hilary Duff is too often the vanilla-bean fantasia AOR
Album-oriented rock
Album-oriented rock is an American FM radio format focusing on album tracks by rock artists.-Music played:Most radio formats are based on a select, tight rotation of hit singles...
chauvinists take all girl-pop for." Stylus
Stylus Magazine
Stylus Magazine was an online music and film magazine launched in 2002. It featured long-form music journalism, four daily music reviews, movie reviews, a number of different podcasts, an MP3 blog, and a text blog....
magazine wrote that Duff's attempt to follow "the [Avril Lavigne] template that she previously softened" yielded "mixed results ... to a certain extent, [she] is a prisoner of her image and her attempts at Chrissie Hynde
Chrissie Hynde
Christine Ellen "Chrissie" Hynde is an US musician best known as the leader of the rock/new wave band the Pretenders. She is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and has been the only constant member of the band throughout its history.-Early life and career:Hynde is the daughter of a part-time...
-intensity fall far short of even Ashlee Simpson's gravelly vocal cords." Its critic described the album's length as its "simple problem", saying that with "a little quality control ... this could easily be as strong as any other teen-pop album released this year."
In response to Duff's "announcement" that "she's a complicated rock & roll adolescent on the order of Avril and Ashlee", Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
wrote, "Uh-huh. And Betty
Betty Cooper
Betty Cooper is a fictional character of Archie Comics, the blonde-haired daughter of Hal and Alice Cooper. Betty likes sports, and is also a cheerleader. Betty was created in December 1941. Her older brother Chic Cooper and older sister Polly Cooper have both moved out of Riverdale, their hometown...
from the Archie
Archie Comics
Archie Comics is an American comic book publisher headquartered in the Village of Mamaroneck, Town of Mamaroneck, New York, known for its many series featuring the fictional teenagers Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle and Jughead Jones. The characters were created by...
comics is Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
", noting Duff's "tiny" voice is "buried under layers of generic cheese arrangements." Sal Cinquemani of Slant called the album "a seemingly endless string of three-and-a-half-minute pieces of pop crap – and I like pop music", and wrote that although Duff "can't be held responsible for most of the album's insipid lyrical content", "when [she] gets in on the action things feel contrived". The New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
named it the worst teen pop album of 2004, saying it was "[n]eck-and-neck for junkiest CD of the year with her arch nemesis, Lindsay Lohan [Speak]".
Commercial performance
The album debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
with 192,000 copies sold in its first week of release, which was lower than the first week sales of Metamorphosis. IGN Music said that partly because of the album's high debut, "at this very moment Hilary Duff is perhaps the reigning queen of bubblegum pop theatrics"; it also said that Duff's image was "undergoing an overhaul" through photo shoots in magazines such as Blender
Blender (magazine)
Blender was an American music magazine that billed itself as "the ultimate guide to music and more". It was also known for sometimes steamy pictorials of celebrities....
, possibly making her less "squeaky clean" than her predecessors Christina Aguilera
Christina Aguilera
Christina María Aguilera is an American recording artist and actress. Aguilera first appeared on national television in 1990 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The Mickey Mouse Club from 1993–1994...
and Britney Spears
Britney Spears
Britney Jean Spears is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears began performing as a child, landing acting roles in stage productions and television shows. She signed with Jive Records in 1997 and released her debut album...
. Unlike Metamorphosis, Hilary Duff went no higher on the Billboard 200, and the RIAA
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States...
certified it platinum
RIAA certification
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets. Other countries have similar awards...
a month after its release. Hilary Duff was number 112 on Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
magazine's year-end top albums chart in December 2004 and number sixty-five on Billboard magazine's year-end top albums chart in November 2005. in its second week, slipped to No. 6 selling 95,500, down 51% over the first week of release the following week the album continued in No. 6, selling 83,775 and falling 12% over the past week.
The album debuted at number one on the Nielsen SoundScan
Nielsen SoundScan
Nielsen SoundScan is an information and sales tracking system created by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett. Soundscan is the official method of tracking sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada...
chart in Canada, as Metamorphosis had done, and it was released in Australia in October. It debuted in the top ten on the ARIA
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956...
album chart, surpassing the top twenty peak of Metamorphosis and rising to its number-six peak position in November. "Fly" was released as a single in the same month and did not perform as well, reaching just outside the top twenty. Duff embarked on a two-date tour of Australia in late October, supported by Popstars
Popstars
Popstars is an international reality television franchise and a precursor to the Idol series. The series first began in New Zealand in 1999 when producer Jonathan Dowling formed the five member all-girl group TrueBliss...
winner Scott Cain
Scott Cain
Scott Cain is the winner of the third Australian Popstars competition in 2002.In his earlier years he was a member of a band named Funkapation, who released the album Peanut Butter Brick in 2000. In the same year Funkapation competed in the Hastings Valley Battle of the Bands earning Scott the...
. In Canada, the CRIA
Canadian Recording Industry Association
Music Canada is a Toronto-based, non-profit trade organization that was founded 9 April 1963 to represent the interests of companies that record, artists, manufacture, production, promotion and distribution of music in Canada...
certified the album three times platinum for 300,000 copies.
In February 2005, popdirt.com reported that because of the failure of "Fly" in the U.S., Hollywood Records would not be releasing further singles from the album. The website said that "The Getaway" was planned as the follow-up single in January, but its release was cancelled after sales of the album went into a "sudden drop". Executives at the label decided that money should be invested in a new album – which became Most Wanted
Most Wanted (Hilary Duff album)
Most Wanted is the first compilation album by American recording artist Hilary Duff. Released on August 10, 2005, through Hollywood Records, the album comprises ten previously released tracks , and three new recordings: "Wake Up", "Beat of My Heart", and "Break My Heart"...
– instead of additional promotion for Hilary Duff, according to the report. Shortly after, Duff fans grouped together to launch the "Hilary Duff Attack Day" Project, a campaign designed to persuade Hollywood Records executives to release another single. Organisers of the campaign, which was endorsed by nearly twenty Duff fansites, instructed fans to buy a copy of the album on April 4 so that the consequent increase in weekly sales would lead to the release of another single. The campaign's online project page said, "The Hilary Duff album has plenty of great songs that would make great singles ... If every fan would buy a CD that day, the sales would increase considerably and we will show the record company that the Hilary Duff CD is amazing, and that another single is in need!" No single was released after the planned "Attack Day". By June 2005, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the album had sold 1.5 million copies in the U.S.; in comparison, Metamorphosis had sold 3.7 million.
Track listing
Charts
| Chart (2004) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums Chart ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... |
6 |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts... (Wallonia) |
71 |
| Canadian Albums Chart Canadian Albums Chart The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS... |
1 |
| Dutch Albums Chart | 16 |
| Japanese Albums Chart Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan. It started as , which was founded by Sōkō Koike in November 1967 and became known for its music charts. Oricon Inc... |
5 |
| Mexican Albums Chart | 6 |
| New Zealand Albums Chart Recording Industry Association of New Zealand The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand... |
14 |
| Spanish Albums Chart | 14 |
| US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
2 |
Certifications
| Country | Certification | Sales/shipments |
|---|---|---|
| Australia Australian Recording Industry Association The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956... |
Platinum | 70,000+ |
| Canada Canadian Recording Industry Association Music Canada is a Toronto-based, non-profit trade organization that was founded 9 April 1963 to represent the interests of companies that record, artists, manufacture, production, promotion and distribution of music in Canada... |
3× Platinum | 300,000+ |
| Japan Recording Industry Association of Japan The Recording Industry Association of Japan is an industry trade group composed of Japanese corporations involved the music industry... |
Gold | 100,000+ |
| United States Recording Industry Association of America The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States... |
Platinum | 1,000,000+ |