Metamorphosis (Hilary Duff album)
Metamorphosis is the second studio album by American actress and singer Hilary Duff. The album was released on August 26, 2003, by Hollywood Records as the follow-up to her Christmas album, Santa Claus Lane. According to Duff, the album incorporates elements of pop and rock music, and it represents changes that are specific to her life and that everyone experiences. Duff worked with several producers on the album such as The Matrix. Others who collaborated on the album include Chico Bennett, Matthew Gerrard, John Shanks and Kara DioGuardi.
The album coincided with other high-profile projects in which she was involved in other media. Metamorphosis received mixed to negative reviews from music critics; some complimented it for being a modern-day bubblegum album, while others considered the album to be a promotional gimmick for Duff, lacking real substance. The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200, selling 203,000 copies in its first week. In the following week, the album rose to number one on the chart. It became the eighth best-selling album of 2003 in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan, selling 2.6 million copies in a period of five months. By late 2005, the album had sold five million copies worldwide. Later the album was certified quadraple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of over four million copies in the United States. For Hollywood Records, Metamorphosis was the label's first high-seller in several years and led to the company's further successful cultivation of new artists and brands using the Disney Channel. She was the sixth solo artist to peak at number one on the Billboard 200 under the age of 18.
Three singles were released from the album. The lead single, "So Yesterday", was released in July 2003 to mixed reviews. The song only made a moderate impact in the United States, peaking in the top 50 at number 42 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Internationally, it peaked within the top-ten of the music charts in Australia, Canada, France and the UK Singles Chart. The second single, "Come Clean", released in early 2004, was more successful in the United States, peaking at number 35 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and becoming her best-selling single in the country. The third and final single from the album, "Little Voice", was only released internationally. Duff further promoted the album with the Metamorphosis Tour, which began in November 2003 and ended in May 2004. In August 2025, Duff marked Metamorphosis’s 22nd anniversary with a social media post ending “To be continued…,” hinting at a possible sequel.
Background
Hilary Duff had always wanted to follow in the footsteps of her elder sister, Haylie Duff. Duff watched her sister rehearsing in 2001, after which she told her mother Susan Duff that she wanted to be involved in singing. During the same time period, she attended a Radio Disney concert where she met Andre Recke, whose client Myra was performing. According to Duff, watching the pop musicians preparing and warming up backstage at the concert made her think, "I want to do this so bad". Recke said he thought Duff, who was popular with preteens at the time because of her role in the popular Disney Channel original series Lizzie McGuire, had "something special... Sometimes you just have that feeling, that, 'Wow, she's a star.'" After becoming determined to start a music career, Duff resumed her vocal lessons—which she had started before her acting career began—and became one of Recke's clients. "I've always had a big drive", she said. "When I felt like something looked fun or I wanted to accomplish something, I really just go for it ... I didn't really know what it was gonna be like, but I knew I wanted to try it and I knew that I could do it." Duff recorded several songs for Disney soundtrack and compilation albums, and a Christmas album, Santa Claus Lane, in 2002. Her songs "I Can't Wait", "Why Not" and "What Dreams Are Made Of" were hits on Radio Disney, but Recke and executives at Buena Vista Music Group envisioned Metamorphosis as a vehicle by which Duff could reach a more mature audience.Recording
Duff, her mother Susan, and Recke enlisted the songwriting and production team The Matrix—whom Recke had previously hired to write songs for Myra's 2001 eponymous debut album—and songwriter Charlie Midnight, who had contributed to Santa Claus Lane. According to Duff, her mother, Recke and Duff herself worked very hard to get music that she related to and was age-appropriate for her. Duff said that she did not want to make "a really poppy album" because that was not the type of music she listened to. The presence of The Matrix was noted because of their work on Avril Lavigne's highly successful debut album, Let Go, but Duff said that she did not want to emulate other artists: "There are definitely people I respect and I love their music, but there was never really an artist that I said, 'I want to be just like them...'... I wanted to be like myself".According to Duff, although she did not write most of the songs, she collaborated on each of them. Aside from The Matrix and Charlie Midnight, contributions to the album came from singer-songwriter Meredith Brooks, Kara DioGuardi, Matthew Gerrard, John Shanks and Duff's sister, Haylie, who Duff said knows her better than "anyone else in the world". Duff discussed her feelings with some of the songwriters, and she praised them because they were open to her opinions and "really got it". She said that she would have liked more time to work with the songwriters and co-write more of her own material, saying "I feel like you need time to really get in touch with yourself to do that". In May 2004, Meredith Brooks, writer and producer of "Party Up", complained about the million-dollar budgets major labels spend to produce albums, saying "There's something seriously wrong with all that! You can't keep that going. Artists have to sell millions of records for anybody to make money off of those bloated budgets."
Production
Influences and sound
As Duff was really into Destiny's Child at the time, initial work on the album carried a more "urban style" than the finished project. The work, according to Chico Bennett, "didn't strike a chord", so they went for a different approach. Recke asked Duff what type of music she would like to do, to which she responded: "Well, growing up, we listened to a lot of rock music, and I like a little bit more guitar in it." So they decided to go about the record with a "real band vibe". According to Recke, the album is still pop, but with a "little rockier edge to it". They wanted to do something that would fit Duff's personality and "something that she wanted to be". Recke made sure that the music was what Duff wanted, as there's "nothing worse than an artist not excited to perform it".Recke, Landers and Duff wanted to make "not just a record that might appeal to an audience because of her television popularity", but they wanted to create a "really fun, great pop record that Hilary could get behind personally". According to Recke, the songs on the album were all "molded around" Duff. He cited this as the reason why the album "feels so authentic". According to Midnight, the album does not contain "just a bunch of different songs that don't have anything to do with the others. When you look at the overall roster of songs, they all do fit into a certain context." Of the process, Midnight explained:
Considering how young she was, I thought that was interesting, that it wouldn’t be a complete fabrication, because I’m used to working with very strong artists, strong personalities. After I got to know Hilary and we hung out, I saw that she had real points of view and was going to be real involved, which makes it easier to actually create the music—coming from somewhere, from a personality, from a point of view, rather than created out of whole cloth. So that excited me. Hilary had so much personality that she was able to convey on a recording.
Contributors
As she was not familiar with the process of creating an album, Duff met with many different record producers. She sat down with each of them and told them what she enjoyed listening to. In some instances, Duff would go into detail about events in her personal life that could be used for inspiration in a song. While Recke and Landers were in charge of looking for the "right songs" for the album, Duff was also heavily involved in the song selection and in "making sure the lyrics were where she was at that age".Kara DioGuardi, who had long outgrown Disney, thus making her unaware of who Duff was, was told by an acquaintance of hers who worked at EMI that she should meet up with Recke. DioGuardi told her friend that she was "on a tight schedule", but later decided that she'd "try it". During their initial meeting, DioGuardi played Recke several songs that she had written. After hearing the selection, he immediately told her that he wanted "Come Clean" and "Little Voice" for Duff, saying that they were perfect for her.
Having liked the chemistry between Charlie Midnight, Recke and Duff on Santa Claus Lane, Landers asked Midnight to provide material for Metamorphosis. He submitted "quite a few songs" for the album because he loved working with Duff. He concentrated on trying to "bounce things" off Recke, Landers and Duff about "what topics they thought would be right" for the album. Midnight was "pretty much ground zero" for a lot of people involved with Metamorphosis, according to Charlton Pettus; he was the lyricist who "seemed to get the tone of it all".
Pettus deemed his involved in the project as being "completely accidental"; he had just moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles and was introduced to Midnight through their mutual friend Marc Swersky. The three wrote several songs together with no particular artist in mind. One song in particular, "Workin' It Out", was given to Duff for Metamorphosis. Similarly, Midnight had written "Love Just Is" with Jim Marr and Wendy Page without "necessarily thinking of Hilary at first". After insisting that Duff should record it, Recke played the song for her and she "absolutely loved it".
The Matrix, a record production team consisting of Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards and Scott Spock had "just come off the back of a very successful little run" with three number one hits with Avril Lavigne when Disney approached them and asked if they would be interested in writing for Duff. They agreed and called Midnight, who had already been involved in the project. Christy cited him as one of her favorite writers and her mentor. Being familiar with their work, meeting with The Matrix was "very exciting" for Duff. Upon hearing the demos for "So Yesterday", "Where Did I Go Right?" and "The Math" – performed by Christy – Hollywood Records "immediately loved them".