Hilary Duff – Inner Strength, [Metamorphosis]

Gavin Mueller and I a few years ago attempted to inaugurate a new musical term onto the landscape entitled shemo, meant to group the number of girls coming out of the woodwork in the wake of Avril Lavigne’s success. As you might expect, it failed. Despite this, I made a mix that helped to trace the lineage of the genre, as I conceived it in my mind, featuring artists like Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton and, at the end, this song by Hillary Duff. It’s the only song on the album credited solely to Duff and sounds like it. It’s, structurally and melodically a poor testament to her skills as a songwriter. Despite this, I find it to be one of the strangest and most interesting songs on her debut album.

[check out the ill-fated birth of Shemo, buy Metamorphosis here]

Natalie Imbruglia – Butterflies, [White Lillies Island]

Another artist found on the compilation was one that I recently paid homage to on my now defunct blog. It’s hard to do justice to an album that’s instantly written off and so uniformly under-promoted, though. It makes sense that it would be both of those things, I guess. Imbruglia seemed built for one-hit wonder status and the used CD bins have borne that theory out, being full of Left of the Middle for years now. But the follow-up was something so different and strange that both the label and the shrinking fan-base didn’t know what to do with it. A shame, then, because the album at times almost rivals The Bends in tone and incredible-leap-from-the-first-recordness. “Butterflies” is one of the tracks that made me sit up and take notice on the first listen through the album. The lyrics are a bit more advanced than what you’d expect from the author of “Torn” and, crucially, the chorus is just as catchy. Hopefully now, Edward O and I can continue to spread the cult of Natalie.

[check out a bizarre review of White Lillies Island, buy White Lillies Island here]

Katy Rose – Because I Can, [Because I Can]

Katy hates Avril and all that manufactured garbage. Too bad her songs don’t let her back the talk up with action, eh? This is one of the few songs on the album, though, that rather gets to me. Sure, it’s maudlin and cloying, but there’s something about Rose’s voice that sears right to the heart of the matter. And while I acknowledge you might have to hear the album to get the same effect (it’s all rockers, which barely lets up throughout) I’m a sucker for the melancholic, as you’ll probably find in future Friday installments of this column. And this one hits the spot nearly every time.

[check out a weird MTV’s Three Questions with Katy here, buy Because I Can here]

Note: These tracks are no longer available for download.