As Hilary Duff gives another auditory snapshot of what to expect from sixth album, Luck… or Something, “Roommates” provides a marked thematic contrast to the first single, “Mature.” For while the latter was all about reconciling with emotions regarding an older man (*cough cough* Joel Madden) who took advantage of her when she was too young to know better, “Roommates” is all about wanting to rekindle feelings of passionate in a (presumably) more equitable relationship. And yes, even more than “Mature,” “Roommates,” both lyrically and sonically, smacks of a Taylor Swift song. This further emphasized by its very “Anti-Hero”-esque backbeat, courtesy of producers Matthew Koma (Duff’s husband) and Brian Phillips. So, knowing Swift’s history of making sure she’s given her “due” (see: Olivia Rodrigo retroactively crediting Swift for “deja vu” and “1 step forward, 3 steps back” after Swift’s legal team entered the conversation), Duff might want to watch her back.
In the meantime, however, she’s got her back turned to the man portraying her erstwhile passionate love interest in the accompanying video. Directed by Matty Peacock (who has also worked with Carly Rae Jepsen, Banks, Selena Gomez and Gracie Abrams), the concept of the “Roommates” visual is simple enough, primarily focusing on Duff sitting or lying around her abode and being ignored by the man that once used to enjoy her in the “back of a dive bar, giving you head” (because, clearly, Duff is all about referencing the oral on Luck… Or Something—that is, if the “Mature” lyric, “Going down on her on your vintage rug” is to be interpreted as another harbinger). To be sure, the overall crux of “Roommates” is mourning the loss of the honeymoon period in a relationship.
However, it isn’t only the loss of that kind of honeymoon period, but also the one you have with life itself. When everything feels full of possibilities and self-oriented potential. Hence, Duff commenting of the single, “It’s that ache for a wilder, freer time—before the days were swallowed by carpools, budget talks, grocery runs and letting old or new insecurities slip in. It’s the restless hum of wanting to find your way back—to your rhythm, to your person, to yourself.” Or, as Duff’s erstwhile “nemesis,” Lindsay Lohan, would say, “I’m comin’ back to me.”
As for the atrophy of lust and romance being addressed, it’s Sabrina Carpenter’s “My Man on Willpower” (far more than Swift’s “Anti-Hero”) that Duff channels as she recalls a time when it wasn’t so easy for her “special someone” to ignore her, lamenting, “Want the highlights, ten out of ten/The butterflies from holding your hand/Before we swept us under the bed/And we became practically roommates” (though, in their past, it was, “Then sneak home, wake up your roommates”—this before she essentially became his roommate by moving in with him). An analogy that, of course, alludes to the platonic, decidedly sexless nature of living with someone for so long, and that level of “intimacy” giving way to banality. And, for hetero men, the cliché goes that there’s no quicker way to become unattracted to a woman than seeing her every day (hence, the misogynistic adage that more or less gets repeated as follows: “Show me a beautiful woman, I’ll show you a man who’s tired of fucking her”). Worse still, starting to treat her like she’s part of the furniture.
Which is exactly how Duff starts to look as she stands in various parts of their house hoping he’ll notice her serving her various “sexy” poses, as complemented by the lyrics, “I’m touching myself by the front door/But you don’t even look my way no more” and “I know we would laugh if I tried walking in in something sexy/But don’t wanna beg you, I know you know what I want.” Which makes it all the more frustrating to Duff throughout the video as she tries to get this stoic man’s attention, complete with climbing on top of him while he sits on the couch.
It’s at this moment that Duff notices a very strong sign of a leak in the corner of her ceiling. So naturally, it doesn’t take long for several scenes of Duff being “soaking wet” to materialize, in a maneuver that fans have rightly called out as a direct nod to her beloved video for “Come Clean” (released in 2004). And as she “let[s] the rain fall down” (miraculously from her ceiling), Duff’s lyrical delivery becomes even more earnest as she exudes the very emotions she spoke to when telling Entertainment Tonight, “[It’s] a song about feeling invisible in your relationship. And I think that, um, it’s a theme that a lot of people, you know, go through. I think everyone in a long-term relationship gets snapshots of, like, this ebb and flow and the highs and the lows and feeling complacent sometimes…”
And how can one not when “life is lifing” (this being the ultimate indication of Duff’s millennial-ness in the song, for it mimics the annoying way that said generation turned a word like “adult” into a verb—as in, “adulting”)? Even so, Duff makes it clear that, “I wanna stay your new girl/Always-think-I’m-cute girl/Only in the whole world [Rihanna knows that feeling],” further adding of her insecurities, “I’m paranoid of new girls/All the shiny cute girls/God, it makes my head swirl.”
Of course, what’s never said by a song that resigns itself to the monotony (for many) of monogamy is that a “new girl” (or boy) might be exactly what this pair needs to defibrillate their sex life. But hey, this is still Hilary “Disney” Duff. She’s not going that far—announcing that she touches herself and looks at porn was already far enough for her.
