Hilary Duff's Lucky Me Tour Is Healing Our Inner Child

In 2004, at the ripe age of eight years old, I went to my very first concert: Hilary Duff’s Most Wanted Tour. Over 20 years later, I bought re-printed vintage merch from that same concert at the Lucky Me Tour, her first trek in nearly two decades. Walking into New York’s Madison Square Garden, I was expecting a nostalgic full-circle moment. But as Duff took the stage for her second sold-out show at the iconic venue, it quickly felt like something way stronger.

Duff’s show is reminiscent of Taylor Swift’s history-making Eras Tour, and not just because the singer is reliving the music eras we grew up with after a long time away. The tour is forming a community of sorts, based not just on nostalgia and girlhood, but on the collective experience of adulting.

Instead of trading friendship bracelets (well, some did), fans came in their Y2K best, creating DIY Lizzie McGuire-inspired ensembles and applying face gems in the hall —  all while drinking Duff’s favorite Aperol spritzes, combining our past and current indulgences. The energy wasn’t that of a typical concert, but of a sacred gathering that would provide some unexpected healing.

The magic of the Lucky Me Tour is that Duff isn’t simply serving nostalgia to pull on heartstrings and make a quick buck. She confronts all of our collective problems head-on with the songs on her pensive new album, luck... or something, singing about family feuds on “We Don’t Talk,” marriage tensions on “Weather For Tennis,” and yearning for our youth on “Adult Size Medium.” It helps create an environment where fans could sing (and scream) through our collective anxieties together.

Therefore, when Duff did relive the early 2000s, from the self-empowerment mantras of “Fly” to the cleansing energies of “Come Clean,” they served as reminders of our adolescent selves, reminding us that we can get through whatever life has handed our way (in my case, grief) without losing our childlike wonder. Maybe I’m starting to understand Disney Adults now.

It also helped that Duff wasn’t afraid to embrace the more cringe moments of her child star fame, showing us exactly how to reclaim our biggest embarrassments. She reprised her viral “With Love” dance with fans and drag queens, and performed “The Math” for the first time in two decades, providing equal parts of Y2K cringe and charm. Yes, the song still slaps.

Over a month into the tour, Duff is seeing this community come together in ways that she never expected, joking that the show “feels like a slumber party where we drink a little too much wine.” During one of her many comforting talks, she recalled watching tons of fans cram into pedicabs and blasting her music on the way home from the previous night’s show.

“I wanted to get out of the car and do, what’s it called, a fire drill? Where you run around your car,” she said. “It was so magical, and these nights are so ‘pinch me.’ I just can’t.”

By the time Duff performed her Lizzie McGuire Movie classic “What Dreams Are Made Of,” a song she hadn’t been able to perform back in the day when she toured more frequently, it felt like a much-earned catharsis. Two friends, who also went to the same show as me, admitted to crying no less than three times — one of whom wasn’t even familiar with all of Duff’s music catalog. Upon exiting, a fan told me how “healing” this show felt, with two other girls yelling in agreement.

Duff mentioned multiple times how powerful it felt to perform songs from luck... or something and also fall back on her older hits, coming to terms with her own childhood as an adult pop star. It had the same effect on her audience, who screamed lyrics from both eras, perhaps wanting to let go of fear, but sometimes simply out of sheer joy. Who knew a Hilary Duff show could be a form of therapy?