Hilary Duff Is Saving Pop Music. Fellow ’00s TV Queens Turned Pop Stars Take Note

“Let’s go back, back to the beginning,” Hilary Duff sings on “Come Clean.” More than two decades later, she’s taking her own advice.

Duff was only a teenager when the iconic track landed on her sophomore album Metamorphosis, which effectively jump-started a music career that spanned four studio albums.

Fans fell in love with the quirky titular character she played on the Disney Channel’s Lizzie McGuire, but Duff’s music career found her dominating radio waves, too. As a ’90s baby only a few years younger than her, I was utterly hooked.

The pop savant’s last album — Breathe In. Breathe Out. — arrived in 2015 and didn’t necessarily match the chart success of prior releases, though it’s sparked a cult following online.

After that, Duff largely stepped back from music to focus on acting and motherhood. However, on Tuesday, Sept. 9, the 37-year-old mom of four revealed that she was indeed going back… Back to the recording studio!

I’m not exaggerating when I say that pop music is saved.

Based on an Instagram post (cheekily captioned “new music … or something”), it appears that Duff worked, at least in part, with husband and super-producer Matthew Koma on new bops and bangers. Living with the creative force behind songs like Zedd’s “Clarity” likely gives her a bit of a boost on the musical front.

But she is hardly the only TV-star-turned-pop-icon from that era who should consider a serious musical comeback.

Fellow teen queen Lindsay Lohan followed in her footsteps when she came out with her debut album, Speak, in 2004. That same year, That’s So Raven’s Raven-Symone found her biggest musical success ever with This Is My Time.

Buoyed by the Disney Channel’s High School Musical, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale launched brief music careers in 2006 and 2007, respectively.

This was a uniquely golden time in the music industry when seemingly anyone could be a pop star, especially if they had some modicum of success on a TV show or were the relative of another celebrity.

Label execs didn’t seem worried about signing artists who took their work too seriously. They were all about cranking out hits. It made the industry so inclusive that you could join in the fun as long as you could afford a studio session and were willing to do whatever it took to get an album out. 

Ashlee Simpson was introduced to us as Jessica Simpson’s punked-up little sister on The Ashlee Simpson Show, which charted her musical debut with Autobiography. Somewhere between filming seasons of The Simple Life, Paris Hilton made time to coo her way through a self-titled debut album.

Brooke Hogan, daughter of wrestling icon Hulk Hogan, hit the dance studio while filming for her family’s reality series Hogan Knows Best. Her hard work led to the release of her glitzy lead single “About Us,” paired with a music video on par with what Britney Spears released at the time.

Speaking of Britney, her younger sister, Jamie-Lynn Spears, made her musical debut by singing the opening song “Follow Me” for her Nickelodeon series Zoey 101. The track was co-written by Britney and featured her background vocals. Imagine being able to say that the Britney Spears sang backup for you?

Even Kim Kardashian dabbled in the industry, ushering in the ’10s with her one-and-done single “Jam (Turn It Up).”

Call it nepotism. Call it favoritism or the industry stacking the odds by signing acts with built-in fan bases. But you simply cannot deny that these women were producing bops. They weren’t all topping — or sometimes even landing on — the charts like Duff, and even if they were, many of them were written off by critics at the time. That’s not the point, though.

Songs like Lohan’s unapologetic “Rumors” or Hilton’s effervescent “Stars Are Blind” remain favorites to this day. I dare you to listen to Hudgens belt out those opening notes of “Sneakernight” with a straight face. It’s impossible because it’s undeniably fun, joyful and utterly carefree — all the things that excellent pop music is supposed to be.

What’s more, Duff and the others laid the groundwork for the likes of child actors like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato and, more recently, TikTok stars like Addison Rae to take the stage. For that alone, these underrated pop stars deserve praise.

These talented and misunderstood artists should consider Duff’s impending comeback a welcome invitation to do the same. In a time when life is far too serious, we need their art more than ever. If the bubbling excitement for a new Duff album isn’t proof enough, consider the success Ashlee is having revisiting her greatest hits with a Las Vegas residency 17 years after her last album arrived.

Hilton finally got around to dropping her sophomore album Infinite Icon in 2024. Lohan teased new music in a 2025 interview with Bustle; Hudgens, Tisdale and Hogan have all dabbled in the studio over the years, which is all great, but we need more.

It’s time for them to take it one step further, go back in the studio and show us what they are really capable of in 2025. Forget the critics and the staunch music execs, the fans are so ready!