Hilary Duff

A notch behind Metamorphosis, but still good

Review Score:

(8/10)
While Hilary Duff's sophomore album is a notch below her wonderful first effort, it still has some gems on it, and is overall a quality CD that is worth owning if you are a fan of Hilary or of the teen pop sound.

The strongest songs are ones from her movie, "Raise Your Voice"-"Someone's Watching Over Me" and "Jericho." Both have beautiful melodies that are very well suited to Hilary's voice (she does much better with the sweet ballads than with the harder rock and roll stuff), and inspiring and upbeat lyrics.

Other good songs on this album include "Fly" (a higher energy song, like "So Yesterday" from her first CD. But which is still melodic enough to work well with her voice), "Do You Want Me?," "I Am," and "Underneath this Smile" (all of which address in some way the paradoxes and contradictions that are part of being human...and especially a part of being a teenager), and "Shine" (another one that is more towards a rockish sound, but still slow enough to work for her...nice lyrics about the power of true friendship to raise our spirits).

There are a couple songs that I have to skip over because they're a bit unpleasant to the ear: "Mr. James Dean" and "Haters." These songs pull Hilary out of the style that works so well for her, and she yells more than she sings. I'm not a big fan of this style with anyone singing it, but it works particularly poorly with Hilary. The lyrics of these songs, too, are more petty and trite than the others. Still, the rest of the album is strong enough to overcome these two.

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