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Picture this - it's the year 2015, and you're a late 90s / early 00s baby. Out of nowhere, Miss Hilary Duff, the myth, the legend herself, is set to release her comeback single Sparks, penned by the ingenious Swedish pop starlet Tove Lo. In fact, Hilary had already attempted to make her big comeback a year earlier with a pair of singles titled Chasing the Sun and All About You. However, after her brief stint as a watered-down impersonation of Colbie Caillat proved to be unsuccessful, Hilary and her team went back to the drawing board, scrapping her upcoming folk-pop album in the process. And thus, Sparks was born: Sparks, a glitzy synth-pop gem, was an instant dance-floor classic upon release, featuring glimmering synths and an infectious whistled breakdown that hypnotized its listeners into submission and pure pop bliss. Unfortunately, barring the addictive confection of the track itself, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for the ex-Disney icon and her plan for pop domination. The music video was instantly met with backlash by fans and casual viewers alike, and rightfully so. The pastel discotheque of the video was interlaced with clips of Hilary going on various Tinder dates that assaulted its viewers in 10 or so second intervals. Needless to say, something needed to be done, and something she did. A month after the music video's release, Hilary came out with a new one - this time around, a so-called "fan-demanded" version. This would go on to set a precedent for the pop music industry at large, including her contemporaries and successors, such as pop icons Britney Spears and Taylor Swift. Releasing content "by demand" became the norm, and while the critically-acclaimed anthem itself failed to produce any meaningful sparks on the charts, it ushered in a new norm that proved to be beneficial for both artists and fans alike. Industry politics aside, the fan-demanded version of Sparks stripped the video of its capitalist debauchery, putting the original vision of a bubblegum dream set to the tune of synth-driven magic on full display: World peace had now been achieved, and fans could finally appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears that had been poured into this piece of fine at. Lizzie clearly got the assignment - she had studied the Blueprint of Pop Music (© 1998 Britney Spears) and it showed. While her successors were releasing "their most personal works yet" and pretending to be authentic songwriters by changing two lines in songs written by teams of 30 other people, Hilary was having none of it. She booked performance after performance on daytime show after daytime show, serving choreography and live vocals and showing the younger generation what they'd been missing out on at the hands of their indolent and ungrateful favorites: And so, after having been given one last chance to redeem themselves and having failed to do so, pop music fans brought it upon themselves, and pop music was never the same again. The end.