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Hilary Duff is the self-titled third album by American pop singer Hilary Duff, released by Hollywood Records in the United States on September 28 2004 (see 2004 in music). Duff said that she had more creative control over the album than she did over Metamorphosis (2003), her second album, and that the songs were more "personal" and contained heavier influences of rock music. Most of the songwriting and production team on the album, which included John Shanks and Charlie Midnight, had contributed to Metamorphosis. Hilary Duff received mostly negative reviews from critics, many of whom compared it to the music of Avril Lavigne and Ashlee Simpson. Sales of the album in the U.S. did not match those of Metamorphosis, and the singles "Fly" and "Someone's Watching over Me" were not major hits.
Content and production
According to Duff, the album chronicles her experiences over the year before its release: "some of it's good, and some of it's bad, and a lot of it's, like, a big learning experience", she explained.[3] 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"[4]) 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 McGuire anymore", she said.[4] She said the album deals with issues she would not discuss publicly and provides "some answers",[2] 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."[5] 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".[6] Its U.S. release date, September 28 2004, was Duff's seventeenth birthday.[5] 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.[7] For songs she did not co-write, Duff discussed her experiences and feelings with the writers and ask them to write songs about them.[7] Members of the creative team behind Metamorphosis who returned for Hilary Duff include Charlie Midnight, John Shanks and Kara DioGuardi (who collaborated on the main 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."[8] 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".[7] She has characterised "Haters" as "tongue-in-cheek" and said people would know what it is about when they heard it,[2] and it attracted substantial publicity when rumors circulated that it was about actress Lindsay Lohan, with whom Duff was alleged to have been feuding.[9][10][11][12] 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."[13] Duff denied that the rumors were true, saying she did not know Lohan and would not write a song about her.[14] 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.[5] Image:Hilary Duff working on Hilary Duff in the studio.jpg Hilary Duff working in the studio.
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".[17] 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 tracks: 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[18]), 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.[19] Critical receptionKen Barnes of USA Today, which gave Metamorphosis a negative review,[20] 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 Avrilesque syllable stretching", while he criticised the high number of tracks and the preponderance of "hackneyed self-affirmation messages".[21] All Music Guide'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". Erlewine added that "ambition sometimes gets the better of Hilary", citing "limitations" of the album such as length, "[oppressive] straight-faced seriousness" and Duff's vocals.[22] 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."[11] 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."[12] 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."[23] 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".[24] 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]".[25] John Shanks received a 2005 Grammy Award for "Producer of the Year, Non-Classical" for his work on "Fly", Autobiography and recordings by Kelly Clarkson, Sheryl Crow, Robbie Robertson and Alanis Morissette.[26] Chart performanceThe album's first single, "Fly", was released to U.S. radio in early August 2004.[27] Its video received heavy rotation on MTV's Total Request Live, but the song received minimal radio airplay and consequently failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.[28] In the week leading up to the album's release, MTV.com featured Hilary Duff on The Leak, a section of the website that allows albums to be streamed for listening. Duff said at the time that she was considering "Haters" as the second single.[2] The album debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200 with 192,000 copies sold in its first week of release, which was lower than the first week sales of Metamorphosis.[29] Unlike Metamorphosis, Hilary Duff went no higher on the Billboard 200, and the RIAA certified it platinum a month after its release.[30] Shortly after, Duff said she wanted "Weird" to become the next single.[31] Hilary Duff was number 112 on Billboard magazine's year-end top albums chart in December 2004.[32] The album debuted at number one on the Nielsen SoundScan chart in Canada, as Metamorphosis had done,[33] 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[34] 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.[35] Toward the year's end, 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,[36] and "I Am" was released to Radio Disney in December 2004;[37] shortly after, promotion for "Weird" began in Spain.[38] During this period, Duff embarked on a concert tour of North America,[39] and several of her shows in Canada sold out in minutes.[40] "Someone's Watching over Me" was the album's second single in Australia in February and, like "Fly", it peaked outside the top twenty.[35] Hilary Duff remained on the ARIA album chart for twenty-seven weeks and was certified platinum for shipments of 70,000 units.[41][42] In Canada the CRIA certified the album three times platinum for 300,000 copies shipped.[43] 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.[44] 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.[45] 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!"[46] 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.[47] Hilary Duff was number sixty-five on Billboard magazine's year-end top albums chart in November 2005,[48] and as of February 2007 it had sold 1.8 million copies.[49] Track listingAudio samples:
Image:Hilary Duff Limited Edition.jpg Limited edition cover
In some countries the album includes a bonus DVD that is identical to the Duff music DVD Hilary Duff: Learning to Fly (and with the same title), and that includes the "Fly" music video and a "Making of" documentary. Credits
Charts and certifications
Notes
References
fr:Hilary Duff (album) it:Hilary Duff (album) pt:Hilary Duff (álbum)
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