I Revisited Lindsay Lohan’s Music Career, and It’s Time We All Agree: Our Millennial Queen Was Robbed of the Praise She Deserved!

When Lindsay Lohan said “I wait for the postman to bring me a letter,” I felt that.

I was only 11 when the Disney star released “Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)” but even then, I knew I was witnessing magic. The rest of the song turned out to be a rageful, highly emotional Avril Lavigne-esque rock ballad about Lohan’s strained relationship with her father, and though I could not relate, I still felt every emotion reflected in that song as though I had lived enough life to do so.

These days, Lindsay Lohan is mostly known for a decades-spanning film career which launched when she was just 11. Her oeuvre has spawned two sequels in Mean Girls 2 and Freakier Friday, with many clamoring for a Parent Trap revisit. Fans are calling her current era the Lohanaissance and it is so well-earned.

I, however, think if we’re going to be revisiting Lohan’s body of work, then we should also revisit her short-lived, albeit impactful music career.

Like many Disney darlings and starlets of her era — Hilary Duff, Raven-Symoné, et al. — it was commonplace for young actors to also dabble in music ventures, with portfolios that also included a little bit of dancing and modeling as well.

Lohan took the mic with the best of ’em.

Following major successes at the box office — and testing the waters with “Ultimate,” a true classic from the Freaky Friday soundtrack — she decided to take her talents to the recording booth and released her first album Speak, in 2004. The lead single, “Rumors” was all about taking the narrative back from those who were claiming she was living a wild life, and particularly lashing out at the paparazzi, who followed her everywhere in those days. (This was several years before her legal trouble and rehab stints, so it was not tone deaf to release an absolute bop about wanting to hit the club unobserved.)

The album was certified platinum, selling a million copies in the U.S. alone, but didn’t quite crack the top charts as much as it did internationally.

She then followed up with “Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father),” the lead single off her second album A Little More Personal (Raw). Proving that the early ’00s were an tumultuous time for young stars trying to work out their emotional baggage while simultaneously juggling the pressures that come with superstardom, critics slammed the song as cliché and over-the-top; Rolling Stone said the song was a “leaden I-hate-you-Daddy lament.”

What was lost on us — yes, us as a society — was the emotional earnestness of the song. The fact that Lohan wrote it at 19, shortly after her estranged father Michael had survived a car crash for which he was charged for driving under the influence, was an impressive way for someone so young and in the spotlight to channel her emotions into productive art. (And in fact, EW did give her credit for that, saying, “Lohan’s (admittedly studio-sheened) brand of pop darkness reads realer than Ashlee Simpson’s … There’s rage (‘Tell me the truth, did you ever love me?’) along with vulnerability ‘I don’t know you, but I still want to’), and a pretty solid hook, too.”)

Her raspy voice amplified the heartbreak in the lyrics; the heavy eyeliner and purple dress with dramatic yellow tulle was peak millennial gothic wardrobe; and the symbolism of the world spectating as her fictional family falls apart has become even more poignant in the age of social media today.

Add the fact that she cowrote the song and directed the video herself — not to mention she recorded it during her breaks while filming Herbie: Fully Loaded — and any millennial will tell you, Lindsay Lohan should get a retroactive Grammy for “Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father.)” The girl had crazy work ethic.

Sure, her albums weren’t chart-toppers, but let’s not forget: early ’00s tabloid culture was brutal. And when you’d gotten a particular label (in Lindsay’s case, a wild child) it was hard to be taken seriously in the aftermath.

She may not have been the greatest vocalist, sure, but I don’t think that’s what kept her from musical success; I’d argue that the noise around her personal life at the time prevented critics from truly appreciating the music Lindsay Lohan put out. As much as her movies have stood the test of time, so too have her tunes and the messages behind them.

Watching Freakier Friday, hearing her voice in the movie and seeing her behind a guitar again made me long for what could have been. Asked if there was anything she missed about the early aughts in a recent interview, Lohan replied, “I think I’m happy today, I would say. And no, I think we always reminisce, but I don’t think we always have to miss.”

A noble sentiment, but frankly, we did miss Lohan’s musical supremacy. And I think it’s time to revisit.