Good girl: Hilary Duffs all grown-up, and she's looking a little like Kylie Minogue.

That whole Britney-as-the-new-Madonna thing didn't pan out. But Hilary Duff is doing a bang-up job of mirroring the career of Madonna's longest-running rival, Kylie Minogue. Both Duff and Minogue started their careers as teen television stars, have sisters with similar showbiz aspirations, and most important, have been romantically linked to scruffy rock stars--Joel Madden of Good Charlotte and INXS's Michael Hutchence, respectively--just as their credibility started to escalate.

Musically, however, Duff is a step ahead of Minogue at this point in her career. Kylie didn't turn the corner with "Better the Devil You Know" and cast off her image as "the singing budgie" until she was 22. Hilary is still nearly two years short of legal drinking age, yet Dignity--her fifth album, if you count her Christmas disc and the piecemeal "best of" Most Wanted--is a surprisingly mature outing.

Which is not to say her new material is all grown up or, heaven forbid, adult in the triple-X sense. Duff cowrote all 14 songs, and there's nothing here you'd be embarrassed to play around your parents--except perhaps "Gypsy Woman," an ill-advised number about an adulterous enchantress that makes Cher's "Dark Lady" seem classy by comparison.

Yes, the lyrics often scan like the highlights of a teenager's diary. But this young lady is also a celebrity, so there are some fun twists to that formula. With the title track, Duff savages club-hopping Page Six bimbos ("it's not news when you get a new bag") to an edgy electro-rock beat. It's not as vicious as Pink's "Stupid Girls," but it's as far as a nice girl dares to go. On "Dreamer" she starts with the type of bouncy pop Gwen Stefani can't seem to muster lately and fashions it into a fun, self-effacing song about delusional stalkers.

Dignity mostly ditches the high-fructose content of earlier Duff jams like "Beat of My Heart" in favor of more sophisticated arrangements: "Stranger" integrates Middle Eastern touches into its tale of a twofaced lover, while the percolating kiss-off "Play With Fire" remains as catchy as it did when it debuted on TRL last winter. And then there's her coquettish vocal on "Danger"; if this track had leaked to the Internet unidentified, fans might have actually mistaken it for Kylie.

Hilary Duff may be the name above the title, but Dignity features numerous outside contributors, all of whom boast A-list credits, like Kelly Clarkson, Fergie, the Pussycat Dolls, Madonna, and Rihanna. But the end result is an album that matches--and in some cases, surpasses--anything those peers have committed to CD in the last couple years. Duff may still have some growing up to do, but she has come into her own.