HILARY DUFF - Luck… Or Something

This is evidently a season of comebacks after a decade away. Just in the past few days we've had the chance to dig into the new solo efforts of Bruno Mars and Jill Scott, and now former Disney starlet Hilary Duff joins the list of artists returning to record an album after so long.

A hugely popular actress and author as well as a singer, Duff - four kids and a beautifully worn 38 years old - has spent recent years focusing on family life, after divorcing her first husband and remarrying Matthew Koma, a successful pop musician and producer (his credits include Zedd's "Clarity", which won a Grammy Award in 2014 for Best Dance Recording). Koma also took the producer's chair for "Luck... Or Something", co-writing several of the songs. The end result naturally reflects the dynamics of family life, with all the joys and insecurities that come with marriage.

This is melancholy, stripped-back, confessional adult contemporary pop, occasionally danceable, driven mostly by synths - perfect for anyone who adored Hilary Duff fifteen years ago and has since grown up alongside her, facing the same problems and the same questions. It's music for parents approaching forty raising kids of their own, songs about the everyday reality of being an adult within a relationship. The problem is that these eleven tracks tend to evaporate as quickly as they appear, a lack of personality so glaring that the most successful song here - the one that sticks in your head the most, so much so that it's become one of Hilary Duff's most-streamed tracks ever - is essentially a Taylor Swift knockoff. That would be "Roommates", which is basically a rather effective mash-up of the verse from "Anti-Hero" with the opening of the chorus from "Blank Space".

Another of the catchier cuts, "You, From The Honeymoon", turns out on closer listen to be a Sabrina Carpenter facsimile, complete with a mood that winks at the Sixties. Things improve slightly with the welcome change of pace offered by "The Optimist", an indie-folk number that breaks from the relentless chase for an electropop hit to recount Hilary's strained relationship with her father; "We Don't Talk", meanwhile, portrays another family rift, the one with her sister Haylie, herself a singer and actress.

Somewhere between an emotional diary and the kind of self-aware introspection you'd expect from a therapy session, "Luck... Or Something" (which debuted at number 3 on the US charts and topped the Australian ones) carries that particular strain of nostalgia typical of someone going through a transitional moment, and Duff leans into it, reworking Blink 182 on "Growing Up" and wrapping things up with a title that says it all, "Adult Size Medium", the closing statement dedicated to all millennials.

The production stays cautious throughout, careful to sand down every rough edge, never taking risks, with flattened dynamics and no room for unpredictable flourishes. It's all perfectly suited to casual, passive, half-attentive listening that conveys ease and detachment: if you're after innocuous background noise, this fits the bill nicely. But the glass looks half-empty if we're meant to read "Luck... Or Something" as the best Hilary Duff has managed to put together in over a decade.

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10/03/2026