Metamorphosis<\/a>. The album\u2019s most shamelessly sugary moments are also its highlights: \u201cWeather for Tennis\u201d finds Duff singing about complicated relationships and arguments, yet its cheery pop would fit perfectly in a Wes Anderson-esque 2012 millennial hipster MV full of color-blocked outfits and goofy choreography set on a tennis court. \u201cFuture Tripping\u201d is pretty much a crash-out anthem, yet it\u2019s light enough that you could skip down the street to its bounce, as unimpeded as a rom-com heroine. (Plus, the \u201cBon Ivar\u201d line is so nonsensical but charming as to feel instantly delightful. Who even mistakenly pronounces Bon Iver like that?)<\/p>\nStill, while many of luck\u2026 or something\u2019s tracks are good, on a sort of baseline level\u2014Koma\u2019s production has that Jack Antonoffian maximalist excellence, and the soundscapes are rich and lush throughout\u2014you\u2019re often trapped with the nagging suspicion that they might\u2019ve worked even better without Duff. Duff\u2019s vocals have always been her greatest Achille\u2019s heel\u2014even diehard fans admit that Duff\u2019s songs are great precisely because they\u2019re so easy to karaoke to\u2014but this supposed flaw actually worked in Duff\u2019s favor when she was younger. Here was, after all, a clear, spring-bright voice that tween listeners could recognize as their own, a voice upon which they could map all their young challenges, heartbreaks, and dreams.<\/p>\n
But tweens these are not anymore, and where luck\u2026 or something falters most is in its attempts at the comeback album\u2019s requisite \u201cmature\u201d tracks. On \u201cThe Optimist,\u201d which describes Duff\u2019s fraught relationship with her father, the woodsy, hushed atmosphere of acoustic guitars and wailing lap steel instantly signal that we are heading into Serious Territory. It\u2019s just that Duff\u2019s voice, even subdued, is still perky at its core. And though this could\u2019ve loosely worked\u2014she is the optimist, after all\u2014when the big mic-drop twist of \u201cBut it\u2019s hard to exist as the optimist\u201d arrives, you realize Duff\u2019s voice lacks the weathered, exhausted edge needed for you to buy the story of betrayal she\u2019s selling here. The same problem exists on \u201cTell Me That Won\u2019t Happen,\u201d where you almost have to do a double-take at such a bubbly, youthful voice declaring \u201cI\u2019m worried that I\u2019ve felt everything I\u2019ll ever feel.\u201d It\u2019s not that sunshine-y pop or even a sweet voice can\u2019t sell conflicted, heartfelt emotion\u2014Natalie Imbruglia would like a word\u2014but the strongest pop artists are able to dig for the crevices in their voices that contain pockets of strangeness and emotion; Duff never quite achieves this feat.<\/p>\n
The songwriting here, too, can be a mixed bag. Certified millennial moments abound, ranging from the painfully corny (\u201cBut life is lifing \/ And pressure is pressuring me\u201d feels straight from a 2013 BuzzFeed GIF-laden listicle) to the amusingly dorky (\u201cI know how you hate the vegan shit and the tarot cards \/ Tell me some words that are dirty in French\u201d). And the album\u2019s frequent nods to the past never feel quite real or lived-in: Duff sings about having no money while being young and free (Hilary Duff? Broke? I don\u2019t think so!), the mere existence and physical reality of tampons (?) and booty calls, and giving head at the back of the dive bar. They\u2019re generic, and they don\u2019t feel specific to Duff; they mostly end up sounding like wild-and-free vignettes cribbed from a Chainsmokers music video, already itself a secondhand memento of times gone by.<\/p>\n
There are highlights elsewhere on luck\u2026 or something\u2014\u201cMature\u201d sounds like Paramore by way of \u201cTeenage Dream\u201d, and \u201cYou, From The Honeymoon\u201d is the type of lilting, romantic-melancholic song that takes perfect advantage of Duff\u2019s light voice\u2014but at the end of the day, nostalgia is its chief selling point. The album ruminates endlessly on those halcyon days of youth, before marriage and motherhood and what-have-you kicked in, before everything felt settled and duller and more predictable than when you first began. Nostalgia, too, is what will keep fans returning again and again to this album: it\u2019s a trippy mind-fuck to hear the voice you associate with butterfly clips and crimped hair and watching TV after school singing about parenthood, marriage, sex, and the challenges you\u2019re going through now; the sheer gulf in expectations makes you realize just how much time has passed without you noticing and how much you\u2019ve grown. I suspect that, for the OG super-fans, this quality will make luck\u2026 or something a fantastic comeback album. For the rest of us, it feels a bit like watching someone else\u2019s home videos: you can see flashes of nostalgia here and there, but you realize ultimately that these memories were never meant to be yours.<\/p>\n
Lydia Wei is a writer based in DC. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Pitchfork, Washingtonian, Washington City Paper, and elsewhere. Find her online at lydia-wei.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The millennials are winning. Haven\u2019t you heard? Here\u2019s Miley Cyrus spearheading the 20th anniversary special of Hannah Montana;…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-292434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}