It was 14 years ago that the world really was introduced to a girl named Hilary Duff.

Two days ago she came out with her latest single, “Sparks.” It is her third single so far from her upcoming, highly anticipated album to be released this year, “This Heart.”  

The first three singles have received mix reviews from critics and fans. Some like them, some compare them to the earlier “little girl” work.

Flashback to early 2000s when we first met Duff: where in pop culture we weren’t just stuck with One Direction to go for boy band music — i.e., there was the choice of Backstreet Boys or N’SYNC. MTV still had a constant stream of music videos instead of teen mothers. And our generation all knew who Lizzie McGuire was.

Every week from 2001 to 2004, millions of pre-teens looked to Disney Channel to see what kind of trouble Duff would get into as the lead in “Lizzie McGuire.”

As her television contract with Disney was coming to an end in 2002, Duff began releasing music, and touring her second album, “Metamorphosis,” with a nationwide tour, which made a stop in Wichita in 2004. Thousands of young Wichita kids and their parents flocked to the then-Kansas Coliseum to see the teenage blonde sing hits from her 2003 album with her sister, Hailey Duff.

This was followed by several movies. Some good, some you probably don’t remember. Most notable would have to be the monster hit, “A Cinderella Story” and the two “Cheaper By the Dozen” movies which, combined, grossed close to half a billion dollars in sales nationally and internationally.

Duff is much more than an actress and singer though; she is a mother, writer, fashion designer, businesswoman and philanthropist. She also has a huge following on social media.

Of her three singles, the best one is “All About You,” which Ed Sheeran produced. It peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 list and has almost 15 million views on YouTube. It is a fun jam. It’s not that the others are terrible; there is just something special about that song.

Love or hate Duff, she is going to be just fine. She has a really good publicist and does smart “attention-getting” things like dye her hair aqua blue before releasing new music. So give her new material a chance.