Hollywood
Pop, 2003

The Lizzie Maguire Show seems like a harmless update of the Clarissa Knows It All show until it spawns Hilary Duff, pop singer wannabe, doesn’t it? I’ve managed to resist listening to the CD for so long until a niece starts blasting it on the player whenever I drop by her mother’s house.

What is even more annoying is that this CD has plenty of good pop tunes. The problem is, Ms Duff sounds like some young girl armed with a karaoke machine and singing while waiting for an imminent asthma attack to carry her off. When she hits the high notes, it’s like a war siren waiting to shatter glasses via a few sonic booms. Wait, maybe those notes are sonic booms inserted by studio technology to mask Ms Duff’s vocal inadequacies.

Still, good pop tunes are one thing. Tracks on Metamorphosis however while great to listen and sing along to, don’t actually manage to score even one elusive hook that has it. It is that property where the song just sticks to my head and have me singing it until I scream for merciful death. Come Clean comes close to having It but that’s because radio has played it so often that the tune has to stick to my head no matter what.

Duff’s little kitty lost voice fails to give her songs any credibility. The rock licks in The Math are pretty cute and will appeal to those little girls that think Simple Plan is so hot and so hardcore, but Duff’s mewling will make even the most hardened Avril Lavigne fan flinch in embarrassment. The problem here is that the best sounding tracks here are produced and mastered by the same people that give you Avril Lavigne and they are better off in an Avril Lavigne CD. Ms Duff sounds just like an anemic cheerleader that tries so hard to emulate Avril Lavigne. In where I come from, we have a shorthand speak for that condition and it’s called “tragic”.