4 out of 5

Label: Walt Disney

Produced by: Gavin Lurssen (mastered by)

I’m ranking this based on what I imagine to be its most common use case, at least at the time of release: purchased for a child who watched the show / is a Lizzie McGuire fan, and then indirectly required to listen to it around the house or in the car, or as fodder for what’s-this-my-kid-is-listening-to ears when bursting into their room, hunting for heroin syringes and condoms. In other words: how tolerable is this to adult ears, and how appropriate is it for youngsters ears?

I’m… not greatly equipped to answer either (yay!!), being un-child-ed and not a big fan of the type of pop music contained on this soundtrack, but my guesstimate is represented in the rating – I think this is a pretty good mix of teen pop + singalong stuff for the folks, and while the subject matter may questionable skew very straight and very boy-reliant, I think there’s enough of a balance of neutral / silly stuff, or “harmless” stuff to get a pass.

Otherwise, the set is largely uninspired, pulling from the top female / female-fronted pop artists of the day (Duff, Jessica Simpson, Mandy Moore) plus some relative standards – Smashmouth, Jackson 5- to fit the aforementioned bill of making this more palatable for a non-teenaged / youth audience. But “uninspired” is kind of what we’re after here, this being a themed radio hits compilation, essentially, and the sequencing, as mentioned, cuts between the wide(r) and narrow(er) demographiced stuff well, plus at least one ballad just to break things up – though otherwise sticking totally to pop and pop-funk. And let’s stick the required show theme at the end.

It’s all mastered at the same level, so no volume fiddling; there’s even some exclusive tracks (a new Duff single; my beloved fan_3) to hawk it even more. I’d only ask for better “this song is from…” info on the back or in the liner notes, though I know the kids don’t care.