Britney, if you’re reading this look away now. Ms. Spears has, we assume, got more important things to do with her life at the moment than listen to pop music, but she should certainly avoid exposure to Hillary Duff’s fourth album, as it could well push her back over the edge.
One pop princess’s trauma, it would seem, is another’s opportunity. This is supposed to be Duff’s coming of age album – we know this because now she appears in videos in her underwear – and would seem to be designed to slip effortlessly into the slipstream left by Spears’s demise. Gone is the actually quite cute lightweight rock of yore (presumably in light of her split from Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden) and in comes the kind of soulless mush that often gets passed off as pop music these days. Think ‘Toxic’-period Britney, when she became a lot edgier, but before the parent frightening days of the Onyx Hotel tour. Similarly, Duff (who co-writes most tracks and is credited as executive producer) is no fool; there's nothing on Dignity that will alienate anyone, apart from people who appreciate a well-crafted pop song.
It’s bland, boring and just not very good. Watch it sell millions. And Britney? Get well soon, we need you more than ever.