All except pubescent girls are entitled to ask: "Hilary who?" This 18-year-old actor/singer is a massive star in the eyes of Sugar magazine readers, but a skinny blonde mystery to everyone else. Duff owes her fame, and a startling 4m record sales, to a Saturday-morning sitcom called Lizzie McGuire, in which she played Lizzie. She's parlayed her telly success into an equally profitable pop career, despite having no great proficiency for music. But if she weren't promoting an album called Most Wanted, her British fans - they were here in their thousands - would never get to see her in the flesh.
There wasn't much flesh to see, Duff being the same size as fellow Hollywood x-rays Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan, but what she lacked in body mass she made up for in shrill joie de vivre. That's the secret of her otherwise inexplicable popularity - Duff isn't much of a singer (certainly not enough of one to compete with the rocky racket her band made), and didn't even attempt to dance, but she's a great cheerleader. Inexhaustibly bubbly and with the sprite-like quality of a young Kylie, she kept the place fizzing with excitement. She strode the width of the stage, grabbed outstretched hands, pronounced the whole thing "awesome" and the kids yelped yearningly. Their stoic parents were probably thinking: "Better her than Slipknot."
The music was much of a shouty muchness. Her "favourite song" Mr James Dean (a curious tune that used Dean as the benchmark of male hunkiness, which must have meant nothing to the crowd), was surprisingly muscular power pop that showed off her caterwauling skills, while the uplifting I Am was introduced by a little speech about loving yourself "whoever you are". And she seemed entirely sincere about that. As a pop singer, Duff is no great shakes, but as a role model, she's admirable.
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/s...764988,00.html
05-01-2006, 03:45 PM
Hilary Duff's A Great Cheerleader 
