Music / Hilary Duff

My name is Lizzie.

Hilary Erhard Duff (born September 28, 1987 in Houston, Texas) is an American actress, singer, songwriter, fashion designer and author active since 1997.

Duff was inspired by Britney Spears and her sister Haylie Duff (Material Girls, Napoleon Dynamite, various songs with/for Hilary) when she was a child to become an actor, singer and songwriter. After working in local theater plays and television commercials in her childhood, she gained fame for playing the title role in the Disney Channel television series Lizzie McGuire.

She subsequently ventured into motion pictures and has many successful films to her credit, including Casper Meets Wendy, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), A Cinderella Story, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, War, Inc., According to Greta, and Stay Cool. More recent roles of hers include Kelsey in Younger and Sophie in How I Met Your Father. She also co-authored a trilogy of novels in the early 2010s as well as a picture book in 2021 named My Little Brave Girl, and started several fashion lines including Stuff by Hilary Duff, Femme for DKNY, and the "Muse x Hilary Duff" collection.

Duff also expanded her repertoire into pop music around the time of her ascent to fame as a teen actress, with three of her albums — her debut Metamorphosis, Hilary Duff and Most Wanted — being RIAA-certified Platinum. She has sold 13 million records worldwide.

Duff is the mother of three children, a son and two daughters. The son was born in March 2012 from her first marriage to NHL player Mike Comrie, which occurred in 2010; they finalized their divorce six years later. She later got married to singer-songwriter Matthew Koma in 2019, with which she had the two daughters in October 2018 and March 2021.

---

Filmography:

• Casper Meets Wendy (1998) as Wendy
• Cadet Kelly (2002) as Kelly Collins
• Agent Cody Banks (2003) as Natalie Connors
• Lizzie McGuire (2001 — 2004) as Lizzie McGuire
  • The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003) as Lizzie McGuire & Isabella Parigi
• Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) (2003) as Lorraine Baker
  • Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005)
• A Cinderella Story (2004) as Sam Montgomery
• Raise Your Voice (2004) as Terri Fletcher
• The Perfect Man (2006) as Holly Baker
• Material Girls (2006) as Tanzania 'Tanzi' Marchetta
• War, Inc. (2008) as Yonica Babyyeah
• According to Greta (2009) as Greta
• Gossip Girl (2009) as Olivia Burke
• Foodfight! (2012) as Sunshine Goodness (voice)
• Younger (2015 — present) as Kelsey Peters
• The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019) as Sharon Tate
• How I Met Your Father (2022 — 2023) as Sophie

---

Discography:

• Santa Claus Lane (2002)
• Metamorphosis (2003)
• Hilary Duff (2004)
• Most Wanted (2005)
• Dignity (2007)
• Best of Hilary Duff (2008)
• Live at Gibson Amphitheatre: August 15, 2007 (2008)
• Breathe In. Breathe Out. (2015)

---

Bibliography:

• Elixir (2010)
• Devoted (2011)
• True (2013)
• My Little Brave Girl (2021)

---

Hilary Duff provides examples of the following tropes:

• Album Title Drop: Clearly in "Dignity" and "Metamorphosis"
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: She has a song dedicated to how rebellious and attractive Mr. James Dean was and how a suitor/stalker/random hanger on could never compare to his brilliance.
  • "Danger" also discusses this phenomenon.
• All Women Love Shoes: Behind the scenes of the Metamorphosis tour she mentions how if she sees a clothing store she HAS to go in and check it out!
• Alone in a Crowd: What's wrong with me, I get lonely in a crowd/everybody's smiling, but I make myself left out in Burned
• Anti-Love Song:
  • "Little Voice"
    I know I sound insane
    Like I'm playing games
    cuz all I really want is you
    But there's some things a girl won't do
  • "Beat Of My Heart" also plays with this.
  • "So Yesterday" is basically about telling your ex "I'm over you".
  • In "Between You and Me", Hils tells this guy who's been cruising her to leave her alone.
• Book Ends: "Come Clean" (Let's go back, back to the beginning), "Underneath This Smile (What I'm standing on is sinking in), "Fly" (Just one moment)
• Break Up Song: In a variety of ways: "Happy", "Outside Of You", "I Wish", "The Getaway", "Who's That Girl", "Stranger", "Beat of My Heart", "Break My Heart", "Holiday", "Jericho", "Crash World", "Hide Away"
• Captain Obvious: So Yesterday: "If the light is off, then it isn't on!" Gee, I never knew that!
• Christmas Songs: Her debut album, Santa Claus Lane, consists entirely of these.
• Cover Version: "Our Lips Are Sealed" (For A Cinderella Story), "My Generation" (At Most Wanted tour), "I Can't Wait" (Originally by Brook Clement), and "Little Voice" (Basically rewrote the lyrics and the aim of the song)
  • She recorded a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Little Lies" for a Younger episode.
• Darker and Edgier: Her music got darker in her self titled era, and her movies went way off the deep end in "War Inc" (Bringing the Sexy for the first time) and According To Greta (As far as character goes).
• Deadpan Snarker: "Between You & Me", "Little Voice", "Do Ya Want Me?", "Dreamer", "Mr James Dean", "Weird", she tends to be cynical and snarky in her music when dealing with unwanted suitors..
  • She also delivered much of it when voicing Animated Lizzie McGuire, and her fair share as Kelsey.
• Driven to Suicide: In "Greta".
• Easter Egg: Used on her first and some versions of her second musical DVDs.
• Epic Instrumental Opener: 30 second instrumental opening to "Happy" with obligatory symphony and off beat beat.
• Exhort the Disc Jockey Song: "Wake Up" (As well as a Rock-Star Song)
  Give me a dancefloor/Give Me a DJ/Play me a record
  Forget what they say
• Follow Your Heart: "Fly", "Rock This World", "Girl Can Rock", "No Work, All Play", "Cry", "I Am", "Inner Strength", "Supergirl, "Come Clean", "Haters", "The Last Song", "Someones Watching Over Me", "Jericho".
• Former Child Star: Averted. She's often held up as one of the go to examples of a child/teen star who transitioned to a stable and successful adult career and avoided any major scandals.
• Genre Mashup: Metamorphosis (The Song) has acoustic, electronic, rap and rnb elements.
  • Dignity is a mash up of dance beats, rock instruments, Bollywood/Indian music, trip pop and power pop.
• Genre Shift: "Dignity" removed previous elements of pop/rock for a more dance, dubstep and electronic sound.
• Greatest Hits Album: Due to executive meddling mostly (Both times).
• Grief Song: "Someone's Watching Over Me"
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She has blonde hair (albeit naturally brunette) and her characters are usually friendly, kind and sweet-natured. She is also often described as being the same in real life.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: Beat Of My Heart introduction.
• Heroic RRoD: Narrowly averted with her musical break after the "Dignity" era and her time out before "Dignity" came out.
  • Her slower pace of work without coming to a complete stop during 2010 and 2011. Getting married and all also helped her avert this assumed trope.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: While performing Stranger and the other woman in Gypsy Woman.
• Hotter and Sexier: Dignity mildly, but her music from Reach Out was quite raunchy (although only compared to her music from her Disney days.) And then of course, there was her role in War, Inc..
• Idol Singer: Starting with her performances in The Lizzie McGuire Movie, until her last album, Best of Hilary Duff.
  • Has decided to give it another go...
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Her character in the film Material Girls did this, and Played for Laughs.
• Intercourse with You: "Reach Out" and "Sparks", although the latter is far more subdued than RCA labelmate Miley Cyrus.
• Let There Be Snow: "When the Snow Comes Down in Tinseltown"
• Listing Cities: Could be in New York, maybe Hollywood and Vine, London, Paris, maybe Tokyo in Wake Up.
• Lonely at the Top: The implication in "Burned".

  What's wrong with me?/I get lonely in a crowd,

  Everyone is smiling/But I made myself left out.

• Love Will Lead You Back: "Jericho" takes this tone.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Dreamer" a song about a stalker and the media who hounds her constantly and is expressed singing wise very sarcastically, the background has "Bum bum bum, da da bum" and extremely happy background music with a smooth beat and chirpy background vocals.
  • Similarly, "Between You and Me" has the girl telling some random guy to piss off, all together with very preppy, almost cynical background music.
• Metamorphosis: her non-Holiday music debut pop album was called this, as it was about her metamorphosis from actor to singer.
  • Butterfly of Transformation: Used in the visuals of the final page of the album.
• Ms. Fanservice: Many of her post-teenage roles have seen her play characters who are very comfortable showing skin as seen in War, Inc. and a few episodes of Younger. She even famously did a nude photo shoot in 2022 and talked about her journey in becoming more comfortable with her body.
• New Sound Album: Dignity is this compared to Hilary Duff and Metamorphosis as she exploited the techno and electronic powers of pop music...and started songwriting the majority of the album for the first time.
• Nice Girl: Has some amazing, positive press, fan experiences and is in general accepted as being a good kind girl and star. She made fun of this image on a talk show, after becoming pregnant by her husband. "Everyone thinks I'm a good girl, but I figured it out." She is also known for playing many characters who are this.
• Non-Appearing Title: "Between You and Me" does not feature the phrase "Between You and Me".
• Obsession Song: "Do You Want Me"
• One-Woman Song: Australian Popstars winner Scott Cain's second album Roller Coaster includes a song called "Hilary Duff" (aka "I've Got A Crush On Hilary Duff").
• The Rival: Lindsay Lohan back in the day.
• Rock-Star Song: "Wake Up"

  Could be in New York, maybe Hollywood and Vine, London, Paris, maybe Tokyo

  Somethings goin on everywhere I go tonight

  • And
    There's people talking/They talk about me/They know my name
    They think they know everything/But they don't know anything
    About me
  • and "Haters", "Burned", "Dignity", "Crash World", "Who's That Girl".
• Roguish Romani: "Gypsy Woman" contains the lyrics "She can rob you blind with just one look, from those eyes. Out of all the thieves that trained her, none of them could tame her."
• Sampling: "Reach Out" samples Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus".
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: According to an "impromptu interview" a fansite gave her in 2013, Hilary felt after the end of the Dignity tour very overwhelmed at her fame and success and very confused about which direction to go to next. She claimed she shut down her clothing line, fired her manager, left her record label, and deliberately laid low for a while, learning to fend for herself and live a normal life, even pondering going to college to study in interior design. In the meantime, she met her future husband and settled down to domestic life for a few years.
• Self-Empowerment Anthem: "Fly" being the most obvious one, but Rock This World, Girl Can Rock, Wake Up, No Work All Play, Inner Strength, Belong and Workin' It Out all also apply.
• Self-Titled Album: Her second album was self titled.
• Silly Love Songs: Where Did I Go Right?, Anywhere But Here, Never Stop
• Spoken Word in Music: "Inner Strength" and "Gypsy Woman" has a spoken intro.
• Stalker with a Crush: Implied by "Mr James Dean", "Between You and Me", "Dreamer", "Little Voice"...and others.
  • Also dealt with a stalker while dating Joel Madden.
• Studio Chatter: Used in "Workin' It Out" amongst others on her first two albums.
• Take That!: Dignity to the various controversial people in 2007 including Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Who's That Girl about how her boyfriend cheated on her with Lindsay Lohan and Haters to general gossip culture and people spreading lies to make themselves feel better about themselves...also Lindsay Lohan.
• Teen Idol: She was the "It" girl when she was about 16 when she really hit it big and started relaxing her fame when she was about 20 and took less jobs and focused more on having a life.
• That Syncing Feeling: Hilary Duff's performance of "Come Clean" live at MTV New Year's Eve 2004. The pre-recorded vocals glitch up and skip at 2 points in the song, causing the vocals to audibly desync from the backing band.
• This Is a Song: In full force in "I Wish".-I guess that's why I'm writing you this song.
• Title Track: Metamorphosis and Dignity
• Typecast: At this point, she seems to have two types. In the years immediately following Lizzie McGuire, every character she played was basically "Lizzie McGuire with a different name" and she still plays these sort of roles now and then. War, Inc. established another type for her, the popular, likely spoiled starlet and/or rich girl — in other words, an exaggerated version of herself.
• Verbal Tic: In her younger years, she was constantly stuttering her "I's".
• Yandere: "Do You Want Me?"

---

... let it wash away my sanity...