“I remember everything and nothing at all,” sings Hilary Duff on Luck… or Something, her first studio release in over a decade that marks her long-anticipated return to music. “Is my reflection someone else’s I stole?” Although it’s been 10 years since her last record and nearly 20 years since she last topped the box office in a theatrical film, Duff has never been too far from the public consciousness that grew up with her in the early to mid-2000s. Indeed, while focusing on acting for the last decade in commercially understated roles on television series like Younger and How I Met Your Father, thanks to social media, the actress and singer has always felt like just a tap away on a smartphone screen.
Whether it was the gay community continuing to raise awareness of her underpromoted previous LP, 2015’s Breathe In. Breathe Out., or Instagram pages dedicated to millennial nostalgia, keeping her era-defining film and television roles front and center, Duff’s media presence still felt ever-present, even when it wasn’t. So when she announced her return to music with her sixth studio album and a new deal with Atlantic Records towards the end of 2025, Y2K nostalgia was at an all-time high, ripening the landscape for the return of one of the era’s biggest teen stars. If Luck… or Something were to beg only one question, it’s why Duff spent so long away from pop music when it’s such a strength of hers.
In 2014, when Hilary Duff first attempted a return to music on RCA after parting ways with the Disney-owned label on which she released her earlier work, the resulting efforts featured a folk-pop sound heard on the ultimately scrapped singles “Chasing the Sun” and “All About You”. If you listen closely between the lines on Luck… or Something, remnants of those folk influences linger. Although the album toes the line between acoustic and dance-pop, it’s Duff that ties it all together with songwriting about, for lack of a better term, millennial ennui.
Whether it’s coming to terms with becoming a parent and therefore a grownup (“Growing Up” samples Blink-182‘s 1997 hit “Dammit”, yet another aphrodisiac for elder millennial listeners), healing your inner child, cutting family members out of your life, or merely trying to make it through the day without succumbing to existential anxiety about the future of humanity. In tackling all of these topics on Luck… or Something, Duff firmly solidifies her place in the pop cultural lexicon as a woman who grew up in public at the dawn of the 21st century with all of its empty promises, and lived to tell the tale.
Where Breathe In. Breathe Out. was committed to mid-2010s dance-pop; it lacked the vulnerability and real-life narratives that Duff so boldly expresses on its successor. There’s never an issue with a singer whose talents lie in creating excellent pop music, merely making a fun dance-pop album. However, Luck… or Something needed to go deeper for the mainstream press to continue taking Duff seriously (or notice her at all), since the culture wouldn’t otherwise care about a millennial former teen star returning to music after an already-failed attempt some ten years ago. However, Duff still has legions of fans, most of whom grew up alongside her. Now those kids have families and credit cards, and are more than willing to sell out arenas to watch their former idol perform live over two decades later.
Whether the emotional depth that’s seldom found in Hilary Duff’s previous work was a marketing tool here or not, she wasted no time in getting candid about past trauma and family difficulty. What makes the record so cohesive as a pop album is her ability to interweave fun, carefree songs like “Roommates,” which she described as a nostalgic ode to fun nights out in your 20s with casual partners, with somewhat heavier offerings like “We Don’t Talk” or “The Optimist”. Where some pop singers would have evaded questions about the subject of a song like the former, Duff swiftly declared that “We Don’t Talk” is about her relationship with her older sister, Haylie.
It’s definitely about my sister,” Hilary Duff told CBS’s Sunday Morning when asked. “I really struggled with thinking about including that on the record. It’s funny, as a person that exists in the world without my other half, so many people are having this experience.” Likewise, on “The Optimist”, Duff sings about a lifetime of difficulty as a child of divorce. “I wish I could sleep on planes / And that my father would really love me,” she hums casually. She refers to herself as an “emotional architect” who learned to think one step ahead of her parent, and wishes that she wouldn’t have to feel “such shame around how often and deeply it cuts” her.
For a singer who made her name on Disneyfied pop jams like “So Yesterday” and “Wake Up”, Duff gets personal in ways she never has on Luck… or Something. What makes it so captivating is that she was, presumably, willing to go deeper than ever before on this album when she could have very easily made another strict dance-pop record that would likely have sold just as well, given her aforementioned status in millennial nostalgia culture. Instead, Duff understood the assignment, as kids online today would likely put it. While Duff grapples with the age-old anxiety of mortality on “Tell Me That Won’t Happen”, the standout track remains its lead single, “Mature”, in which she references a past relationship with an older man whom she observes continuing the same pattern.
The song encapsulates everything Duff has tried to communicate with this record, specifically that growing older as a woman in an industry obsessed with youth is difficult and, at times, predatory. Reminiscent of Alanis Morissette‘s “Hands Clean”, Duff creates light, love, and levity out of a difficult memory, a device that Hollywood continues to seem destined to repeat. These are the best kind of pop songs: ones that testify to the unpleasant nature of fame while also releasing the weight of those demons years after moving on. Hilary Duff not only moved on, but did so on her terms, with her talent and stage presence very much intact.