Duff serves the pop without the tart

Thousands of preteens -- sugared up, waving glow-sticks and out-screaming Howard Dean -- were attending their first real concert at Hilary Duff’s Universal Amphitheatre show Saturday. And accompanying them, enacting what has become one of the sweetest rituals of modern culture, were parents, embarrassedly reminiscing about their own first concerts.

It was easy to picture these kids in 20, 30, 40 years, taking their children to their first concerts, while embarrassedly reminiscing about this day. But maybe they won’t need to be too embarrassed.

Sure, Duff’s popularity (her debut album, “Metamorphosis,” has sold 2.6 million copies in the U.S. since its August release) springs directly from her former Disney Channel presence as the star of “Lizzie McGuire” and its spin-off feature film.

Sure, she’s used music and image templates already placed down by Avril Lavigne and Michelle Branch (and worked with the production and writing teams behind their hits).

Sure, though she fronted a real, live rock band, she appeared to be lip-synching most of the show.

Yet Saturday, when she also performed an evening show, she seemed the perfect pop star for the pre-teen crowd, and why shouldn’t that crowd have its pop stars?

It sounds backward, but there’s something more real to this actress taking the role of pop-rocker than there is to Lavigne herself. Where Lavigne seems to be packaged as a rebel without actually being rebellious, Duff on Saturday never affected any posturing -- she even de-rebelized the Who’s “My Generation” in her encore, singing “Hope I don’t die before I get old.” (What next? “I Can Get Satisfaction”?)

Presenting herself as a straightforward rocker in black tank top, skin-tight pants and white knee-high boots, Duff firmly distanced herself from the last generation of Disney-spawned popsters (Britney, Christina and Justin). There were no dancers or choreography, no glitzy gimmicks, no props, just a good ol’ concert performance marked by cheer and charm. The songs were uniformly robust and catchy with state-of-the-art writing and production, the lyrics sticking (appropriately) to puppy love and rudimentary self-image concerns.

Most noteworthy, while the now-16-year-old’s image has been slightly sexualized, it was still quite wholesome and innocent in comparison to the Lolita tease Spears peddled from the start. And a sense of girl power was reinforced by the fact that with a drummer, three back-up singers and on-stage “video deejay” all female, Duff and her gender-mates outnumbered males on stage six to four.

“There’s a whole bunch of people who look like pop stars, and there’s Duff, who looks like a 16-year-old girl, if with more make-up and more expensive clothes, but looking like part of her audience, and they love that,” says Joe Levy, music editor of Rolling Stone, about a recent Duff television appearance. “They loved it on ‘Lizzie McGuire,’ and now she’s doing it on stage.”

Her arrival on the music charts also came at the perfect time for Top 40 radio, which needed an infusion of new youth, says John Ivey, vice president of programming for Clear Channel Radio Los Angeles and program director of its lead station, pop outlet KIIS-FM (102.7).

“She could be the start of the next up cycle, because she has the entire package,” Ivey says.

Of course, it’s no accident. Duff’s career is the result of detailed strategizing and market research (she parted ways with Disney television and film, but her music career is still being overseen by Disney’s Hollywood Records and Buena Vista Records wings). Hollywood executives eagerly point out that the album sales so far come behind just one single, “So Yesterday.” The album’s second single, “Come Clean,” has just started to make a pop radio presence.

As much as the plan is paying off now, what are her prospects for meaningful longevity in the pop world? Will she be able to balance her pop ambitions with her acting career and be taken seriously in the music world?

“A lot depends on her,” says Ivey. “Her acting is such a big part of what she’s done and there’s obviously a lot more money to be made on that front quickly.”

Other questions loom as well. Will she rebel and reject the clean-cut image as she leaves her teens? Will she develop any artistic vision of her own? Nothing Saturday gave any conclusive indications, though she clearly needs to work up some between-song connection with the audience, a lack that was surprising, given her background.

“Looking for her to be successful -- that’s an easy bet,” says Rolling Stone’s Levy. “Looking for her to turn into Joni Mitchell -- that’s tougher money.”

But it seemed silly Saturday to try to project five or 10 years down the road. After all, these are fans clearly in the moment -- for them, 15 minutes until the end of class seem like forever.

Friends Sammy Siegal and Emma Cannon, both just shy of 10 and each experiencing her first real concert, found the experience was all they’d hoped for. For this pair, accompanied by Siegal’s father, Hank (whose first concert was Frankie Avalon in the early ‘60s), it wasn’t just a matter of what happened on stage. Asked what their favorite part of the concert was, young Siegal said simply, “I liked screaming.”

Her friend echoed that, saying, “My favorite was the wave and screaming.”

“I also liked jumping on my chair,” added Sammy.

It’s so easy for grown-ups to lose sight of what really matters.