In the early 2000s, Hilary Duff soundtracked the era of butterfly clips and Laguna Beach for a whole generation of tweens and teens. Now, the singer-actress has returned to address her millennial audience with the same relatable charm, but this time, she’s not holding anything back. On Luck…or Something, Duff gives listeners a front row seat to the therapy sessions, marital tensions, mid-drive anxiety spirals, and fraught walks down memory lane that make up life for many a 30-something. The result is an album that feels as if the singer has invited us into the backyard of her Beverly Hills home, uncorked a bottle of orange wine, poured a glass and said, “Let me catch you up on what’s really gone down in the past decade of my life.”
There’s a lot of ground to cover in what Duff describes as the “other side of cherry-flavored Chapstick” on this album’s centerpiece, “Adult Size Medium.” In the years since she released the 2015 dance-pop album Breathe In. Breathe Out., she turned her attention back to her acting career, married musician Matthew Koma, and had three more kids. As Duff sings on the single “Roommates,” life has been life-ing, for sure.
Duff has said she felt comfortable laying herself bare on Luck…or Something as she worked alongside Koma, who co-produced the entire record. Even with her husband behind the boards — or maybe because he’s there — Duff relentlessly shares the insecurities that come with married life. On the pulsating cut “Holiday Party” she details a recurring cheating nightmare, while the slow rocker “You, From the Honeymoon” is a daydream about days “before you knew a hand-slap across the face.” On the propulsive “Roommates,” Duff fine-tunes her fears and desires in the face of shifting realities: “I only want the beginning/I don’t want the end,” she admits atop Koma’s expertly crafted beats.
Those aren’t the only topics that this former child star treats with sobering candor on this album. “I wish I could sleep on planes/And that my father would really love me,” she confesses on the pensive highlight “The Optimist.” It’s her most vulnerable song to date, and it leaves a chilly sting. Meanwhile, “We Don’t Talk” portrays another familial rift, this time with Duff’s sister, Haylie. “We don’t talk about anything anymore,” the younger Duff sings on the eerie chorus, which seems to echo the distinct xylophone whistles from Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know,” even if they’re not quite close enough to be credited on the track.
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Despite what the internet hoped for, Duff doesn’t anoint herself as a savior of millennial pop music with Luck … or Something. Instead, the album is a seamless blend of the singer’s specific tastes, millennial-coded and otherwise. “Growing Up” interpolates Blink-182’s “Dammit” for an ode to a ride-or-die friend; elsewhere, she name-drops some of her more recent influences, like the Japanese House. It’s the most self-assured Duff has ever sounded, especially as she quips about “some bitch at a bar” who pronounces indie icon Bon Iver as “Bon Ivar.”
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Overall, the album is dominated by swooping pop synths that shimmer and sparkle with the same relentless optimism you probably remember from Duff’s early hits. Give credit for that to Koma, a pop architect in his own right whose résumé includes a scatter of brightly-hued tracks in the mid-2010s, including a co-write credit on Zedd’s 2012 hit “Clarity,” production credits on Shania Twain’s 2017 comeback Now, and even a Britney Spears single. Like Duff, Koma seems to have found the perfect home for his sunny melodies with his wife.
By the end of Luck…or Something, the wine bottle is empty and the wistfulness is at an all-time high as Duff cements her new millennial soundtrack with “Adult Size Medium.” She conjures the ephemera of one’s early twenties against big-swing synths, and faces the aching distance from that era. “Nobody runs faster than time,” Duff sings, but makes sure to remind her audience: “It’s heartbreaking and reassuring.”
