Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis is the second studio album by American actress and singer Hilary Duff. The album was released on August 26, 2003, by Hollywood Records and Buena Vista as the follow-up to her debut studio album and first Christmas album Santa Claus Lane (2002). According to Duff, the album incorporates elements of pop and rock music, and it represents changes that are specific to her life and that everyone experiences. Duff worked with several producers on the album such as The Matrix. Others who collaborated on the album include Chico Bennett, Matthew Gerrard, John Shanks and Kara DioGuardi.

The album coincided with other high-profile projects in which she was involved in other media. Metamorphosis received mixed reviews from music critics; some complimented it for being a modern-day bubblegum album, while others considered the album to be a promotional gimmick for Duff, lacking real substance. The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200, selling 203,000 copies in its first week, becoming the highest opening week sales figure for a debut album by a female artist in 2003. In the following week, the album rose to number one on the chart. It became the eighth best-selling album of 2003 in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan, selling 2.6 million copies in a period of five months. By late 2005, the album had sold five million copies worldwide. For Hollywood Records, Metamorphosis was the label's first high-seller in several years and led to the company's further successful cultivation of new artists and brands using the Disney Channel. She was the sixth solo artist to chart on the Billboard 200 under the age of 18.

Three singles were released from the album. The lead single, "So Yesterday", was released in July 2003 to mixed reviews. The song failed to make much of an impact in the United States, peaking in the top 50. Internationally, it peaked within the top-ten of the music charts in Australia, Canada, France and the United Kingdom. The second single, "Come Clean", released in early 2004, was more successful in the United States, peaking at number 35 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and becoming her best-selling single in the country. The third and final single from the album, "Little Voice", was only released in Australia. Duff further promoted the album with the Metamorphosis Tour, which began in November and ended in December 2003.

Background
Hilary Duff had always wanted to follow in the footsteps of her elder sister, Haylie. Duff watched her sister rehearsing in 2001, after which she told her mother that she wanted to be involved in singing. During the same time period, she attended a Radio Disney concert where she met Andre Recke, whose client Myra was performing. According to Duff, watching the pop musicians preparing and warming up backstage at the concert made her think, "I want to do this so bad". Recke said he thought Duff, who was popular with preteens at the time because of her role in the popular Disney Channel original series Lizzie McGuire, had "something special ... Sometimes you just have that feeling, that, 'Wow, she's a star.'" After becoming determined to start a music career, Duff resumed her vocal lessons—which she had started before her acting career began—and became one of Recke's clients. "I've always had a big drive", she said. "When I felt like something looked fun or I wanted to accomplish something, I really just go for it ... I didn't really know what it was gonna be like, but I knew I wanted to try it and I knew that I could do it." Duff recorded several songs for Disney soundtrack and compilation albums, and a Christmas album, Santa Claus Lane, in 2002. Her songs "I Can't Wait", "Why Not" and "What Dreams Are Made Of" were hits on Radio Disney, but Recke and executives at Buena Vista Music Group envisioned Metamorphosis as a vehicle by which Duff could reach a more mature audience.

Recording
Duff, her mother Susan, and Recke enlisted the songwriting and production team The Matrix—whom Recke had previously hired to write songs for Myra's 2001 eponymous debut album—and songwriter Charlie Midnight, who had contributed to Santa Claus Lane (2002). According to Duff, her mother, Recke and Duff herself worked very hard to get music that she related to and was age-appropriate for her. Duff said that she did not want to make "a really poppy album" because that was not the type of music she listened to. The presence of The Matrix was noted because of their work on Avril Lavigne's highly successful debut album, Let Go (2002), but Duff said that she did not want to emulate other artists: "There are definitely people I respect and I love their music, but there was never really an artist that I said, 'I want to be just like them...' ... I wanted to be like myself".

According to Duff, although she did not write most of the songs, she collaborated on each of them. Aside from The Matrix and Charlie Midnight, contributions to the album came from singer-songwriter Meredith Brooks, Kara DioGuardi, Matthew Gerrard, John Shanks and Duff's sister, Haylie, who Duff said knows her better than "anyone else in the world". Duff discussed her feelings with some of the songwriters, and she praised them because they were open to her opinions and "really got it". She said that she would have liked more time to work with the songwriters and co-write more of her own material, saying "I feel like you need time to really get in touch with yourself to do that". In May 2004, Meredith Brooks, writer and producer of "Party Up", complained about the million-dollar budgets major labels spend to produce albums, saying "There's something seriously wrong with all that! You can't keep that going. Artists have to sell millions of records for anybody to make money off of those bloated budgets."

Release and promotion
Metamorphosis was released in North America on August 26, 2003. Its CD+DVD deluxe editions were released in Japan and Australia in 2004. During the period in which Metamorphosis was released, Duff was participating in many projects in film, brand licensing, music and television; USA Today wrote in July 2003 that she was emerging as "The Next Big Thing" and "a marketing powerhouse" with nine to twelve year-olds, and Billboard magazine said that she "is looking to become more than just the nation's next teen pop princess. She wants to become a brand-name phenomenon ... [Metamorphosis] is just the beginning." These projects included the high-profile Hollywood films Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) and A Cinderella Story (2004), a clothing and accessories line called Stuff by Hilary Duff, a Lizzie McGuire merchandise line, and a Visa prepaid credit card for children aged six to thirteen. She also participated in a marketing campaign for the Hasbro personal video player VideoNow, for which she filmed the video A Day in the Life of Hilary Duff, which included a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the "Why Not" music video. Entertainment lawyer Larry Golring called it "a great cross-promotion" for VideoNow and Duff's music career, which he said were "two new brands that are going to be huge this time next year, and they hopefully will have helped each other get there". The Associated Press quoted Bob Cavallo, the chairman of Buena Vista Music Group, as saying that "At this point, she's obviously already a franchise".

Marketing people such as Laura Groppe, president of Girls Intelligence Agency, said that the timing of the release of Metamorphosis and other Duff-related products was right because there had been a lack of teen idols since Britney Spears, and that Duff "[is] not too pretty. Not too thin. Not too anything ... like a little Meg Ryan." According to Marketing Evaluations/TvQ, Duff was, in July 2003, the female star most popular with kids aged between six and eleven. Amy Doyle, at MTV's vice president of music programming, said Duff was "definitely one of the hot people to watch ... She's become the fabric of pop culture with teens right now." There was concern from some, however, that Duff could become overexposed, although Duff's manager emphasised his selectiveness against "[i]f something looks cheesy", and that Duff "doesn't want to be all over TV commercials". Others, such as Robert Thorne, the CEO of the Olsen twins' Dualstar Entertainment, said that Duff should have stayed with The Walt Disney Company — from which she separated after contract negotiations broke down — to build the Lizzie McGuire franchise and use it to help develop her career into adulthood. In spite of this split, the profile of Duff and the album was supported by the DVD release of The Lizzie McGuire Movie and reruns of Lizzie McGuire episodes on the Disney Channel for two seasons. Duff herself said that Lizzie McGuire was "a great place to begin my career", but said that "it's exciting to go out on my own" with Metamorphosis.

Before the release of the album, and beginning in July 2003, Duff and Metamorphosis were given substantial promotional support from MTV, which highlighted "So Yesterday" on Making the Video and Total Request Live; Duff co-hosted the special TRL's All-Star Backyard BBQ. "So Yesterday" was released to U.S. Top 40 radio in mid-July, after which it became the "most added" song on the format. On the internet AOL Music had a marketing relationship with Duff and Metamorphosis: it hosted the premiere of "So Yesterday" and recording a Sessions@AOL broadcast with her, among other content exclusive to AOL members. In late September The WB Television Network aired an hour-long Hilary Duff birthday special, and MTV aired an episode of the documentary series Diary that followed Duff through a day. A DVD containing music videos, performance and behind-the-scenes footage and bonus features, Hilary Duff: All Access Pass, was released in November.

Duff embarked on a four-week concert tour in the U.S. from November to early December 2003. The song "Anywhere But Here" was included on the soundtrack of the film A Cinderella Story; Duff promoted the film and Metamorphosis with a series of television appearances in July 2004, including one on |ABC's Good Morning America. She performed before roughly 7,000 people, breaking a Good Morning America audience record. In the same period she embarked on a U.S. summer tour, during which she performed a one-hour set that included Metamorphosis tracks, covers of The Go-Go's' "Our Lips Are Sealed]]" and The Who's "My Generation", and previously unheard material from Hilary Duff. Haylie Duff was the opening act on the tour, which ran for thirty-six dates and sold well in major arenas ; Pollstar editor-in-chief said that there was "a real positive buzz about ticket sales for Hilary's show". The tour was involved with the charity Kids with a Cause, of which Duff was a charter member in 1999; it sponsored a "Food for a Friend" drive and encouraged attendees to bring canned food to each tour venue, where the cans were collected and distributed across shelters in each city through which Duff toured. By early August 2004, enough food had been amassed to feed more than 12,000 children. The success of the tour was credited with helping keep the teen pop market alive in the tour circuit, and for being one of the "bright spots" in a slow concert season.

Track listing
Credits adapted from the liner notes

Metamorphosis Remixes
Metamorphosis Remixes is a four-track extended play (EP) that was released on November 18, 2003 exclusively to Kmart retailers. It included remixes of three tracks from Duff's album Metamorphosis, as well as the album version of track "Sweet Sixteen".

Track listing
Notes
 * Track listing and credits from album booklet.
 * The asterisk (*) denotes remix and additional production.

Credits and personnel
Credits for Metamorphosis adapted from Allmusic.
 * Chico Bennett — composer, producer
 * Meredith Brooks — producer
 * Rob Chiarelli — mixing
 * Lauren Christy — composer
 * Savina Ciaramella — A&R
 * Kara DioGuardi — producer
 * Hilary Duff — composer
 * Graham Edwards — composer
 * Matthew Gerrard — composer
 * Martin Häusler — art Direction, design
 * Jay Landers — executive producer
 * Stephen Marcussen — mastering
 * Dani Markman — A&R
 * Jim Marr — producer
 * The Matrix — arranger, engineer, mixing, producer
 * Charlie Midnight — composer, producer
 * Keith Munyan — photography
 * Sheryl Nields — photography
 * Wendy Page — composer, producer
 * Charlton Pettus — composer
 * Andre Recke — executive producer
 * Jeff Rothschild — engineer
 * John Shanks — producer
 * Joel Soyffer — mixing
 * Scott Spock — composer
 * Steve Sterling — layout design
 * Marc Swersky — composer
 * Denny Weston, Jr. — producer

Metamorphosis Remixes personnel
Credits for Metamorphosis Remixes adapted from liner notes.
 * Andre Recke — executive producer
 * Charlie Midnight — composer, producer
 * Chico Bennett — remix
 * Denny Weston, Jr. — producer
 * Graham Edwards — composer
 * Haylie Duff — composer
 * Jay Landers — executive producer
 * Joel Soyffer — mixing
 * Joe Bermudex — remix
 * Lauren Christy — composer
 * Matthew Gerrard — composer, producer
 * The Matrix — arranger, engineer, mixing, producer
 * Meredith Brooks — producer
 * Rob Chiarelli — remix
 * Scott Spock — composer
 * Steve Sterling — album design
 * T.L. Rhodes — composer
 * Toran Caudell — composer