Sisters Hilary and Haylie Duff are the stars of the soundtrack for Hilary’s latest cute-a-thon, A Cinderella Story, and just as you expect, the songs they perform are enough to rot your teeth from the inside out. The first track finds the sisters Duff showing off their interchangeable vocals on a cover of the Go-Go’s “Our Lips Are Sealed,” its notorious, busting-your-first-nut subtext blown right out the water thanks to the ladies’ G-rated, painfully unironic sincerity. And that aesthetic carries the CD from beginning to end; it’s perhaps the most optimistic, wholesome, teenybopper-friendly mix tape that’s out right now. It’s inoffensive to the point of being utterly offensive. There is the usual smattering of previously released radio hits — “I’ll Be” rears its over-familiar head — but it’s “Lips” and the solo tracks performed by Hilary and big sister Haylie (could somebody please tell me where it says that if you can sing marginally, your sister can get a record deal, too?) that define how pitifully safe this album is. Though it claims to rock out, the discount riot-grrl tunes these gals attempt to growl make them sound less like Avril Lavigne and more like they’re trying to spark a grunge renaissance. Perhaps Hilary should stick with the acting thing — you can’t be the voice of a generation if you end up sounding like the voice of the last generation.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2004.