A Song And Words That Start With "S"

These quotes on writing from Lily King’s book Writers & Lovers. My fellow Heart The Lover fans, I liked it even better!

“The hardest thing about writing is getting in every day, breaking through the membrane. The second-hardest thing is getting out. Sometimes I sink down too deep and come up too fast. Afterward I feel wide open and skinless. The whole world feels moist and pliable.”

“I'd had a few bad days of writing, and I was tempted to go back a chapter to fix it, but I could not. I just needed to move forward, get to the end. Painters, I told myself, though I know nothing about painting, don't start at one side of the canvas and work meticulously across to the other side. They create an underpainting, a base of shape, of light and dark. They find the composition slowly, layer after layer. This was only my first layer, I told myself as we turned the corner, the dog pulling toward something ahead, his nails loud on the sidewalk. It's not supposed to be good or complete. It's okay that it feels like a liquid not a solid, a vast spreading goo I can't manage, I told myself. ”

I started writing a review of Hilary Duff’s new album and absolutely couldn’t do it, but here’s as far as I got. The thesis: Hilary Duff gives us middle age mom pop! lyrical themes include longterm monogamy, marital bickering, aging, fear of the future and longing for the past. Overall, I’m a fan.

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I grew up with Hilary Duff.

“Come Clean” in the opening credits of Laguna Beach! My heart flutters thinking about it.

Seventeen-year-old me pined for Lauren Conrad’s severely straightened blonde hair! Alas, I was a Texas born Jewish girl with humidity stricken, over-moussed waves. She gave us TRL-era pop and then Disney-curated edge — A Y2K icon, a staple of every millennial girl’s youth.

So when her new album, luck…or something, popped up on my Spotify, I had to listen! And what I found surprised me. The songs on this album explore themes formerly at odds with mainstream pop.

Plus, for her long time fans - who are mostly millennial moms, too - her comeback is rich with meaning. Hilary is 38 now. A mom to four children. It’s been 11 years since she released an album.

This is a mother who intentionally downshifted her career to prioritize family life and is reentering the fray on her terms. Her magnetism is undeniable. It’s the magnetism of a mother! It’s a public comeback to inspire many private ones. She represents thriving after having kids but still in the midst of raising them.

It’s fitting that on luck…or something she’s returned to us with a songs that explores themes unique to middle age, including longterm monogamy, marital bickering, aging, and nostalgia.

If Taylor Swift’s controversial album, Life of a Showgirl gives us bouncy pop about the dream of settling down and building a family with a lifelong partner (see: “Wishlist”) Hilary is giving us the reality of it.

Like Hilary, her fans are (likely) 5 to 10 years into marriage, contending with the real challenges of longterm partnership and the relentless responsibilities of parenting. And though Hilary’s songs are marked by the details of her public relationships, family rifts, and childhood stardom, she’s also speaking the language of the millennial mom.

Pitchfork called her lyrics “precisely positioned at the crossroads of autobiography and universality,” and I agree: autobiographic reflections are laced throughout the album, but “universality” misses the mark.

In luck…or something, themes like nostalgia and anxiety are stage-of-life specific, unmistakably contextualized in the trappings of middle age. She’s not singing about building a life, she’s singing about being smack in the middle of the life she’s built — puzzling over how to sustain it, how evolve within it. Hilary is bringing a unique angle to pop: the existential quandaries of middle age.

In “Roommates”, she sings about the inevitable lulls in longterm monogamy, with a nod to a relationship trope of early parenthood: the roommate stage. The new moms know it’s inevitable — necessary sometimes — to slip into a roommate dynamic in parenthood, going through the motions of changing diapers, swapping the night feed; and later, packing lunches, washing dishes, crashing out on the couch after bedtime. Hilary is pining for the early days of her relationship. “I want the highlights, ten out of ten (Ah-ah)/ The butterflies from holding your hand (Ah-ah)/ Before we swept us under the bed /And we became practically roommates.”

In the pre-chorus she sings, “But life is life-ing and pressure is pressuring me /Oh, I wish that I could catch you in the right light.” It’s kitschy, but then she hits us with that relatable desire to see your long term partner in “the right light.” It’s that feeling of catching their eye from across the room at a party. There they are, the person you fell in love with.

Hilary touches on the funny intimacy of the roommate stage, too, when she sings, “And I know we would laugh if I tried walking in something sexy.” Code switching from co-parents to lovers is funny! You have to laugh. And she’s acknowledging that the roommate stage carries its own kind of intimacy. Thats why we say “parenthood made us closer than ever,” all while grieving the mystery that came at that closeness’ cost.

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That’s all this week.

Love you,

Stephanie

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