Songoftheday 10/04/24 - Let's go back back to the beginning, back to when the earth the sun the stars all aligned...

 

 

"Come Clean" - Hilary Duff

from the album Metamorphosis (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #35 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 2

 

Today's song comes from actress and singer Hilary Duff, who was born in Houston, Texas, but moved with her sister and mother to Los Angeles when she was only six years old to ostensibly start a career as a child in show business (with her sister even younger). After appearing in commercials and bit parts acting, in 1998 Duff starred in the straight to video release Casper Meets Wendy, a "prequel" to the successful 1995 film version of Casper. Hilary's big break came at the start of 2001 when she was cast in the title character of the Disney Channel show Lizzie McGuire. The show became a huge success on the network, and a year later, amongst a truckload of merchandise around the show, a soundtrack was released, which peaked at #31 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and spent over a year on the list, going on to sell over a million copies. (Duff only sang on the opening track "I Can't Wait".) With that momentum, Duff released a holiday album under her own name, Santa Claus Lane, which came in at #154 on the Billboard 200 and only spent three weeks on the list (as do Christmas albums) but still sold over a half-million copies. Along with starring in the TV show, Hilary also made other movies, and in the spring of 2003 a Lizzie McGuire Movie came out, which made decent box office considering its low budget, and the accompanying soundtrack, which how had two Hilary tracks (along with two featuring sister Haylie), went to #6 on the Billboard 200 and sold over two million. A song from the record, "Why Not", was produced by Dan Hartman's collaborator Charlie Midnight and would be a top-40 hit in Australia and New Zealand, and be revised on her next release.

But also during this whirlwind 2003 Duff was recording a second studio album in her name, Metamorphosis, which came out only a couple months after the Lizzie film. The first single from the record, "So Yesterday",  which was written by Midnight with the production team The Matrix (Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards, and Scott Spock), who helmed Avril Lavigne's breakthrough.  The song did pretty decently on the radio, climbing to #15 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, but ended up stalling a couple notches under the top-40 on the sales and airplay all-genre Hot 100 in the autumn of 2003.  

 

For the second single from the set, industry pros Kara DioGuardi and producer John Shanks were brought in to write and produce "Come Clean". An angsty attempt at light rock for the younger market, the song's lyrics have Hilary singing about a couple who are going through some things, and expressing that they need honesty from the other. But it's a little more intention than substance, which is fine in the teen-pop world, but doesn't translate much further than that. The production from Shanks is tight and professional, and robotic in the boy-band/teen diva vein. Hilary's tone is that flat cooing prevalent at the time, but propulsive enough to get the girls (and young gays) bouncing, and with a music video more serious than it should be, Duff found herself with a bigger hit...

"Come Clean" became Hilary's first top-40 hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in March of 2004. On the radio, the song climbed to #9 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, and #37 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. Internationally, the single made the top ten in Canada (#7 Sales) and the Netherlands (#9), and reached the top-40 in Spain (#12), Ireland (#16), Australia (#17), New Zealand (#17), the United Kingdom (#18), France (#29), and Belgium (#33 Flanders). The Metamorphosis album, released in August of 2003, topped the Billboard 200 sales tally for a week, going on to spent 77 weeks on the list and selling over four million copies.

 

The third and final single from the record was "Little Voice", which was also co-written by DioGuardi with Swedish producer Patrik Berger and was a minor hit in Sweden for pop singer Sahlene. Duff's weirdly quirky version didn't get much notice in the States, but was a #29 hit in Canada and Australia.

 

Hilary will be back to the series.

 

(5/10)

 

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

 

Here's Duff in concert from her DVD release...

 

 Lastly, an "acoustic" version...

Tomorrow I'll roll out my top hits of this week, then on Monday song of the day will return with Eminem's side project announcing their ownership.