“I keep seeing you guys on the Internet saying the most lovely things about this being like a healing experience. It’s for me. I think I’m being healed.”
Photo: Aaron Idelson
There came a point halfway through Hilary Duff’s sold-out show at the Brooklyn Paramount — amid a sea of “Sing to me, Paolo” posters, glitter hair clips, and Depop-sourced Stuff by Hilary Duff baby tees — that she had a confession to make. You see, she named her tour “Small Rooms, Big Nerves” as a bit of a fail-safe. Duff wasn’t so sure, having not embarked on a full concert tour since 2008, that she could sell out a venue with a roughly 2,500-person capacity. Did the “bought Metamorphosis at a Sam Goody” crowd still show up? Yes, of course they did. The ticket mayhem was downright Swiftopian; don’t even look at the resale tickets for her next concert in Los Angeles. “I can’t believe you all showed up for me,” Duff admitted during her 75-minute set. “It’s a dream. I keep seeing you guys on the internet saying the most lovely things about this being like a healing experience. It’s for me. I think I’m being healed.”
Duff’s January 27 stop in Brooklyn was the third on her very short tour — that Los Angeles show will serve as the finale, with Toronto and London dates already behind her — which was planned ahead of the release of her sixth studio album, Luck … or Something, due on February 20. “It’s been way too long,” Duff explained at one point. “It means a whole lot to me that all these years later, these songs mean something to you. We can reminisce and remember the past, and also relate and meet here tonight. I get to sing new songs for you, and hopefully we get to relate on those levels because we’re all adults now.” As if trying to convince us, she punctuated the remarks with “You’re watching Disney Channel” choreography.
While former stars of the Disney machine may choose to eschew or reinterpret their early, little-autonomy material — Aly & AJ, for example, no longer perform “Like Whoa” and changed the arrangement of “Potential Breakup Song” to suit their folk-rock pivot — Duff had no qualms honoring the Lizzie McGuire of it all. After opening the show with faithful renditions of “Wake Up” and “So Yesterday,” her set list was peppered with material from her forthcoming record that would’ve soundtracked that canceled Lizzie reboot nicely. (One stanza, from the slick “Roommates”: “I want the part where you say, ‘Goddamn’ / Back of the dive bar, giving you head.”) Another debut, “We Don’t Talk,” is purportedly about Duff’s estrangement from her sister, Haylie, in which she laments, “I’m not sure when it happened.” “Fly,” the lead single from Duff’s 2004 eponymous album and a spiritual younger sister to Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life,” received the longest and perhaps most surprising backstory. “I’ve always thought about the harder moments with this one,” she said. “I’ve tried to lean on the people I’ve felt safest with and find the strength myself. Whatever you’re going through, this is definitely a sweet one you can find some meaning and comfort in.” One song, meanwhile, barely required an introduction at all: “This song’s about rain. I think you know it.”
This photo was taken, quite literally, so yesterday.
Photo: Aaron Idelson
Other than ending the funky earworm “Metamorphosis” one verse early and utilizing cue cards for its bridge — “It’s just long, that’s a long time to say that word” — Duff breezed through the TRL staples “Why Not” and “With Love” in preparation of taking the millennial audience to their promised land, free of tone-deaf Paolos. “What Dreams Are Made Of,” the hit written for The Lizzie McGuire Movie that she refused to perform live until this tour, was reclaimed by the now-38-year-old Duff as an anthem of how her life evolved. (She has four children and is married to producer Matthew Koma, who was a key collaborator on Luck … or Something.) Duff only hopes that her fans, too, share that same type of acceptance with themselves. “One of the highlights of building this show was digging into my old catalogue and listening to lyrics and applying them to my life now,” she concluded before the pink-butterfly confetti kicked in. “Some of them definitely made me giggle, and some of them meant so much to me. I know a lot of you are here tonight because they meant a whole bunch to you too.” To quote a very wise woman: Have you ever seen such a beautiful night? It’s doubtful.
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