The album, like her overall relaunch, attempts to balance this nostalgia with that perspective. Matthew Koma, Duff’s husband and a songwriter and producer who’s worked with pop artists including Pink, Carly Rae Jepsen and Britney Spears, produces and writes across the project, which employs engaging but synth-heavy beats across the tracks.
On album opener “Weather For Tennis,” Duff contemplate arguments. The lyrics, simple but multisyllabic tongue-twisters like, “You calling me bats—’s / The fastest antibiotic for thinking / You’re different this time,” don’t feel far off, spiritually, from the zingers of her earlier radio hits. Muffled drums give “Holiday Party,” about a partner’s imagined affair, a darker clubby beat, while booming drums and claps make “Future Tripping,” about needing a partner’s grounding abilities, bubbly. Laughs and dialogue layered into the track put the listener in the room with Duff, to a charming effect. But “Tell Me That Won’t Happen” has a too-similar conceit, the pace steady while the lyrics spiral through more worries: “Are we 80 years proof? Are we really immune? Will I want something new? Will you want something new?”
Still, the tracks are accessible and catchy, the lyrics reliant on simple vocabulary that makes them feel like gossip or worries shared among friends (see Duff’s ode to chosen family, “Growing Up”). That closeness, built by fans’ nostalgia and Duff’s accessible, laid-back, adult persona, is her not-so-secret weapon. Onstage this winter, Duff mimicked a dance that went viral after a 2007 performance of her song “With Love,” pulling fans up to dance with her. Winking at that past, probably more self-conscious version of her pop star self, she acknowledges that she’s grown without distancing the fans that grew up with her. That self-awareness can make even the cheesiest of lyrics — “Your kinda freak matched my kinda freak” or “Do I nail you to a cross on some bogus s—” — endearing.