Hilary Duff Turns Millenial Growing Pains into Soft-Pop Gold on 'luck... or something': Album Review
- Abby Anderson
- 49 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Stand-out tracks: "Weather For Tennis" "The Optimist" "Mature"
Our favorites: "Future Tripping" "Holiday Party" "Adult Size Medium"
Release date: February 20, 2026
Label: Atlantic Records
For fans of: Selena Gomez, JoJo, Julia Michaels
In the last year, we've seen the return of Hannah Montana, a Jonas Brothers tour, a new Freaky Friday movie. And now, with luck... or something, her first album in over a decade, we're witnessing the second coming of Hilary Duff, the patron saint of butterfly clips and bedroom-wall posters, forever etched into millennial memory through Lizzie McGuire. In the last ten years, Duff has done what her generation has done best: grow up in public and make it look survivable. She married Matthew Koma (the producer of this new project), became a mother of four, returned to acting in comedy TV, and quietly stepped beyond the pop machine that first defined her. luck… or something doesn’t feel like a nostalgia grab, it feels like a version of Hilary Duff that is intent on turning inward instead, revisiting her own history with the steadiness of someone shaped by time and a clarity you can’t manufacture.
Deceptively sunny, album-opener "Weather For Tennis" is an effervescent ode to the most mundane of quarrels in love. With a bridge that taps into some of the most simplistic-yet-effective production choices in pop music, Duff proves that in her time away from music, she hasn't forgotten any of the tricks in the book. And what incredible genius is the line, "If it ain't the weather for tennis then, guess we can argue until dinner time"? And this wasn't Hilary's only shot at a great first impression; twisty guitar runs and shimmering piano-synth progressions stamp a pop-gold seal onto the comeback single “Mature.” If this doesn't stay stuck in your head whenever you get around to turning off the inevitable repeat of this album, that's a feat to put in the special skills portion of your resume.
She followed up "Mature" with the pre-release of “Roommates,” which borrows a beat pattern that mimics Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero.” But where Swift leans into self-laceration, Hilary Duff turns inward in a different way. She takes a similar thematic concept and draws it closer to the chest, threading it with a level of intimacy that shines across the full luck… or something project. Coming from a place that feels like neglect born of over-familiarity, “Roommates” romanticizes the intoxicating beginning of a relationship, the way infatuation glosses over everything, only to watch that glamour dim, slowly and honestly, as time goes on. "Future Tripping" also hits relationship doubts from a note of millenial dream pop. While maintaining the clarity of Duff's crystal clear, lightly angelic vocal tone, her lines punch close to the heart: "I'm worried about shit that hasn't happened / Entertaining every doubt / Oh, here I go again / Future tripping out, spiraling around and around / Can you keep me on the ground?"
Growing pains seem to be one of the thematic through lines that luck... or something masters with a fresh perspective that also feels brutally honest, and "We Don't Talk" hits the pain of familial estrangement. Again, Duff is the master of saying less to say more, using the song's bridge to convey an uncomfortably familiar communication battle: "I'll hear you out, you'll hear me out on the couch / Get back to how we were as kids / Break it down / So sick of being so sad about / How we don't talk, and you won't talk about it." And once luck... or something reaches the aptly-named "Growing Pains," Hilary Duff reminds her devoted fans of every reason why they fell in love with her charm back when she was fedoras, butterfly clips, and Lip Smacker gloss. She's a grown-up product of the early 2000s, sampling Blink-182's "Dammit" on this track and painting love as something much more mature than the texting games, dating buzzwords, and influencer mom hacks of today. She's about as real as they come, giving friendship it's opportunity to be romanticized in adulthood, honoring those who stay through, "Handshakes and tattoos / Heartbreaks and bad moods / First kiss and hard truths / Family pain, truths."
When most people think of Hilary Duff, they think of the cheery, carefree attitude of her earlier hits like "Why Not" and "Wake Up," the pop hits that were meant to inspire through joy and a catchy pop beat. But Duff has a new substance to her after years away from the intense spotlight, living through motherhood and divorce, and that tangible growth appears on "The Optimist," a song that a casual listener never would have pegged as a Hilary Duff song. Airy and comfortably haunting, "The Optimist" is every woe of the toxically positive put into words, striking harsh truths through to it's last lines: "My door is open just in case / You don't even have to say you're sorry / I already forgive you for all of it / But it's hard to exist as the optimist."
Duff also doesn't shy away from brutal anxiety on the duo of "Holiday Party" and "Tell Me That Won't Happen," pairing synthy, poppy drum beats with the fears of abandonment across both tracks. But luck… or something moves toward its final revelations with "Adult Size Medium", driving home that even in adulthood, nostalgia still calls; that we long for new beginnings, for sparks, for the reckless joy of youth, even when we’ve been taught to leave those things behind. Duff balances dream and reality with disarming vulnerability: “I remember everything and nothing at all / I'm waking up to a dream sequence / Sometimes I can't see me in it / Was any of it worth it after all?” And who better than Hilary Duff, who has lived every phase of growing up in the public eye, to remind us that those longings don’t make us foolish. They make us human. They make us, in the end, lucky to be alive.
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