[5] She expressed an interest in recording lyrically more aggressive material than the songs on Metamorphosis (2003) and wanted the album to reflect that, according to her, she is a normal sixteen-year-old.

"[1] Four songs — "Fly", "Someone's Watching over Me", "Shine" and "Jericho" — were used in Raise Your Voice, a film released shortly after the album in which Duff starred as an aspiring singer who attends a prestigious performing arts summer school.

"[12] She characterised "Haters" as "tongue-in-cheek" and said people would know what it is about when they heard it,[7] and it attracted substantial publicity when rumors circulated that it was about actress Lindsay Lohan, with whom Duff was alleged to have been feuding.

"[18] Duff recorded the first three songs for the album between the shooting dates of Raise Your Voice and The Perfect Man, two films in which she was involved.

"), British songwriter Guy Chambers ("Shine"), Julian Bunetta and James Michael ("The Getaway") and Ty Stevens ("Rock This World").

Duff neither confirmed nor denied whether the song was about fellow singer Aaron Carter, and she said "it was definitely an experience that I went through that was interesting and I learned a lot from that time in my life.

"[8] In "Hide Away", co-produced and co-written by Shaun Shankel, Duff discusses a relationship that isn't working because she is in a position where her life is "figuratively under the microscope.

"[11] Diane Warren wrote "I Am", an empowerment song in which Duff lists positive and negative aspects about herself; she has said it is about being comfortable "with all those feelings ... being who you are."

[21] Duff's management team considered recording a song titled "Since U Been Gone" for the album, which Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald and Max Martin had originally written for Pink.

The music video directed by Chris Applebaum, combines black-and-white backstage footage with color shots of Duff performing the song.

"The Getaway" was issued in the US in November 2004 and in Canada in January 2005,[24] and "I Am" was released to Radio Disney in December 2004;[citation needed] shortly after, promotion for "Weird" began in Spain.

Ken Barnes of USA Today, which gave Metamorphosis a negative review,[34] commented positively on the album and said it exemplified "a more wholesome brand of rock-flavored pop aimed at teens".

Barnes praised the "unstoppably rousing choruses" in some of the songs and said "Duff avoids overextending her thin but pleasant voice, except for a bit of Avrilesque syllable stretching", while he criticised the high number of tracks and the preponderance of "hackneyed self-affirmation messages".

"[16] In response to Duff's "announcement" that "she's a complicated rock & roll adolescent on the order of Avril and Ashlee", Entertainment Weekly wrote, "Uh-huh.

And Betty from the Archie comics is Patti Smith", noting Duff's "tiny" voice is "buried under layers of generic cheese arrangements.

"[28] Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine called the album "a seemingly endless string of three-and-a-half-minute pieces of pop crap – and I like pop music", and wrote that although Duff "can't be held responsible for most of the album's insipid lyrical content", "when [she] gets in on the action things feel contrived".

[32] The New York Daily News named it the worst teen pop album of 2004, saying it was "[n]eck-and-neck for junkiest CD of the year with her arch nemesis, Lindsay Lohan [Speak]".

[36] IGN Music said that partly because of the album's high debut, "at this very moment Hilary Duff is perhaps the reigning queen of bubblegum pop theatrics"; it also said that Duff's image was "undergoing an overhaul" through photo shoots in magazines such as Blender, possibly making her less "squeaky clean" like her predecessors Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears.

[45] Duff embarked on a two-date tour of Australia in late October, supported by Popstars winner Scott Cain.