With Love (Hilary Duff song)

Composition

"With Love" is a moderately fast song that has a 4
4 time signature and a tempo of 122 beats per minute, and it is in the key of C♯ minor. Billboard magazine described it as "a beat-happy track that delivers a propulsive, guitar-laden, bleep-heavy hook", and About.com wrote that the song comprises "[e]lectronic bleeps with hand-clapping and finger-snapping beats", Duff's "adult pop vocals" and an "attack" of a "[c]runchy, dance-rock guitar [that] underlines the hook". The vocal range required for the song is E₃ to C♯₅. According to Duff, the song is about having a "crazy job" but being kept "sane" by "that one person" with whom they are in a relationship, "and letting that person know that you appreciate criticism or advice because you know it comes from a place of love." Duff also stated that the song was originally written and recorded only for the purpose of promoting her fragrance, With Love... Hilary Duff, but decided to include it on the album.

Remixes

Dance music producers Richard Vission and Dave Audé, Joe Bermudez and Francis Preve, Josh Harris (under his alias "Big Woodie") and Bimbo Jones have each remixed "With Love". The New York Post wrote of another remix, by Castillo, "Duff finds her dance groove on this terrific sexy slink ... Its layered production makes it the kind of track that gets better with plenty of volume and some room to shimmy-shake." A hip hop remix of "With Love", the Play-N-Skillz remix, premiered on March 27 and features rapper Slim Thug; it was released to U.S. radio stations on a promotional single. Speaking with Complex Magazine, Thug said that he had wanted to expand his horizons with his participation in the remix:

Critical reception

"With Love" received a positive review from Chuck Taylor of Billboard, who stated that the song "serves to reinvent the appealing singer as a boogie diva. It's a daring approach, and one that sets Hils apart from so many rhythmic acts homogenizing the pop airwaves." It was also well received by Bill Lamb of About.com, who said "on "With Love", [...] style and elegance combine with an irresistible hook to make a record difficult for pop radio to ignore"; Lamb continued that the single "looks poised to break down the [pop radio] walls" for Duff and reach the top ten, and that "Duff sounds like a Kylie Minogue disciple in the making." The song was ranked sixty-seventh on About.com's "Top 100 Pop Songs 2007" list. A review for the UK television program Newsround called it a track that "Kylie or Madonna would love to have on their next album" and predicted that it would be a top twenty hit. Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times described the song as "a tart dance track", and TeenHollywood.com said it "has a Gwen-Stefani-in-a-rah-rah-skirt feel to it."

Commercial performance

"With Love" premiered on Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM on January 25, 2007. It became the most added song to U.S. top 40 radio station playlists in mid February, and it was Duff's highest peaking song on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 radio chart since her previous single "Come Clean" (2004). "With Love" was released as a digital download in the U.S. on March 13. It debuted at number forty-two, the highest debut of the week, on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in late March 2007; it sold 32,500 downloads that week. In mid-April, the song reached number twenty-four and was the greatest digital sales gainer of the week with sales of 57,500. "With Love" remained on the Hot 100 for nine weeks. The song became Duff's first to top the Hot Dance Club Play chart and her first to reach the top ten on the Pop 100 chart. It was ranked twenty-seventh on the year-end Hot Dance Club Play Tracks chart. In the United Kingdom, a week before its CD single release, "With Love" debuted at number sixty on the singles chart. The song reached number twenty-nine the following week, where it peaked. It is Duff's lowest peaking single there. The single performed less well than most of Duff's previous singles in Australia, reaching number three. As of July 27, 2014, the song had sold 550,000 copies in the United States.

Background

The "With Love" music video was directed by Matthew Rolston and doubles as the television commercial for Duff's fragrance With Love... Hilary Duff. It was filmed at City Hall in San Francisco. Three versions of the commercial, each with a different length (fifteen, thirty and sixty seconds), entered rotation on U.S. television networks in November 2006. Rolston said that he was asked to incorporate an element of intrigue and open-endedness into the commercial that could serve as a cross-reference to other facets of the With Love... Hilary Duff promotional campaign. Rolston responded by including allusions to films in which "women use hair and makeup and wardrobe to change their identities", citing Vertigo (1958) and La Femme Nikita (1990) in that respect. He also included a cliffhanger designed to generate discussion among young people—"It gives them something to blog about and be viral about", he said—and adult elements that would help to introduce Duff to an older audience.

Synopsis

The video begins with Duff receiving a standing ovation for a performance. She goes backstage, where her entourage hands her a bag, coat and hat. A man (played by Kellan Lutz) who was standing outside the auditorium follows her to a hotel. In the lobby, Duff sprays With Love... Hilary Duff perfume on her neck, reverses her coat and puts on a black wig, giving her hat to an old black man whose back is turned. Pursued by the first man, she walks up a staircase, throws the coat off the railing, tears off her white dress to reveal black, and rips off the lower half of the dress. The man smells the perfume on her coat and follows her into an elevator car, where she teases him by pulling his tie. The cables holding the elevator car break, causing it to fall down the shaft, and Duff and the man embrace, kissing passionately. The video concludes with a title card that reads, "...to be continued."

Release and reception

The music video premiered on MTV's Total Request Live on February 8, 2007. It debuted on the Total Request Live countdown the next day at number eight and reached number one on eight subsequent countdowns, eventually being "retired" from the show after forty days on the countdown. In Canada, the video reached number one on the MuchMusic Top 30 Countdown, the first video by Duff to do so. For the video, Duff won the award for People's Choice: Favourite International Artist at the 2007 MuchMusic Video Awards. A separate version of the music video was produced for airing on Disney Channel and its online DXD service on the page for Radio Disney. This version of the video features Duff performing the song with her band in a studio and dancing. The alternate video also aired on Family, in Canada.

The New York Times cited the song, music video and commercial's cross-promotion of one another as an example of corporate synergy, and Ron Rolleston, Elizabeth Arden's executive vice president for marketing in New York, called it "an interesting evolution in advertising [...] The commercial stands independently, and the music video stands on its own, and they enrich each other. That's what's cool about it [...] young people are engaged by different varieties and types of media". Rolleston said the campaign, the goal of which was to "[combine] advertising and entertainment", was "an interesting challenge [...] If video killed the radio star, advertising will save the video". Entertainment Weekly called the video "femme fatale-ish" and "like Madonna's "Justify My Love" for the TRL crowd—steamy hotel assignations, wigs, etc." Sharon Dastur, program director at New York City radio station WHTZ, said that her first reaction to the video was, "'This is exactly the kind of song she should be doing.' Hilary's more mature look completed the package. Her sound and image are a natural progression."