Hilary Duff’s ‘Metamorphosis’ Turns 10: Backtracking
In retrospect, it’s clear that Duff — and Metamorphosis, her proper debut — was the template from which the later crop of now-megawatt Disney princesses were launched, on a platform of tween television success into careers as bona fide recording artists. But she wasn’t a Britney or a Christina.
“I know people think Disney is such a machine and cranks it out, but really, I was the first one. When other pop acts from Disney, they didn’t come back on Hollywood Records.” she says. “Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera — they were from the Disney machine. But when they came back, they weren’t signed to them. They went away from their tween era. They were sexy, edgy artists. Even Justin [Timberlake] was the same thing. I never went away from my tweens: I was in the spotlight in front of everyone, and so my talent was really questioned. Because it’s true — I wasn’t an artist.”
“I never grew up saying, ‘I’m going to be a singer and here’s my music’ — I learned along the way, and I do take myself seriously as an artist now,” Duff says. “But to be honest, when I came into Metamorphosis, I had no idea what I was doing. Thank God, Hollywood had relationships with producers and writers and could make those connections. I just knew what I liked listening to. When they set me up with The Matrix, Avril Lavigne had just broke and I was super pumped. They were cranking out hits at the time.”
The Matrix gave Duff her first single from Metamorphosis, “So Yesterday,” which peaked just outside the top 40 at #42, but went Top 10 in the UK, Australia, Canada and France. Although they were the boldfaced name on Metamorphosis, the biggest (and best) song on the album is also the one that produced the most fruitful relationship for Hilary — “Come Clean,” penned by Kara DioGuardi, the Grammy-nominated writer-producer who served as a judge on American Idol for two seasons and became a television personality in her own right. On later records, Hilary returned to that collaboration; together, they wrote almost every song on Dignity, easily Duff’s strongest work. For my money, Dignity is one of the best dance-pop records of the ’00s, and foreshadowed the dance invasion that came to predominate over radio in the ensuing years; for that reason, it’s aged astonishingly well. It’s a ballsy, personal record, and DioGuardi’s stamp is all over it.
Hilary remembers hearing DioGuardi’s demos for the first time: “I kept liking all these songs this girl Kara had written, and I was like, ‘Who is this chick? I love her.’ I connected with her music. It was angsty but sweet at the same time. The first time I met her, she was in the studio, and she came in late. She was balls to the wall. She was louder than all the boys. She opened up her laptop and was like, ‘That melody sucks. Let’s try this one.’ She was bossy and sexy and unapologetic. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I think I want to be you.’ She taught me so much.”
It was almost inevitable that they’d work together on Duff’s best album. “When it came to write Dignity,” she says, “I told [my manager] that I didn’t want to make another record unless I was writing all the songs and I could take time with it, and I knew I wanted to do it with her. I was never a brat — if someone came and laid a monster hit on the table in front of me and it was done and I had nothing to do with it, of course I would record it. But I think just having the confidence — I knew I could do it. I wanted to write.”
DioGuardi, unsurprisingly, has fond remembrances of her first interactions with Hilary, too: “I was in my 30s, and she was maybe 14, so I felt like more of a mother than a colleague. I was protective of her. I knew this was one of her first experiences recording songs and understanding how to make a record, and I wanted to make it a great experience for her. It was a predominantly male-driven industry, and it still is. I was one of the only women that she worked with, and I wanted to make sure with that experience, I could empower her, too.” (Clearly, it worked.)
