A life without new music from Hilary Duff? Well, that’s so yesterday. The Lizzie McGuire Movie star released “Mature,” her first new song and music video in a decade, at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday.

“‘Mature’ speaks to my mature self calling my not so mature self on the phone many years ago, and she’s letting her know we landed softly,” Duff wrote in an Instagram caption celebrating the song’s release. “This was a brief time with a lover that left me with so many questions. … It felt like a good place to start. How are we feeling … Mature?”

The scathing pop-rock track sees Duff criticize an ex-lover for moving on with a younger woman who’s fallen for his “Scorpio touch.” Duff’s not judging the girl though. She’s been there herself, which she acknowledges on the chorus: “She looks/Like all of your girls but blonder/A little like me, just younger/Bet she loves when she hears you say, ‘You’re so mature for your age, babe.’” 

“It’s a really fun song, and I feel like it’s myself talking to my younger self about an experience that we had,” Duff said of track on the Wednesday episode of Jake Shane’s Therapuss podcast. “Just reflecting on it and being OK with it, and having, you know, a little tongue-in-cheek moment with yourself and like accepting your past and being good with where you landed.”

Duff said she’s ready to reconnect with her fans through music.

“I have this crazy, like, connection with fans that I’ve known since I was 9 to 10 years old, and I just want to connect with them again now,” she told Shane. “And I think that we have gone through a lot of the same things, whether that’s complicated relationships, anxiety, raising kids, divorces, trying to find yourself in adulthood, family drama. I mean, lots of topics that, you know, just felt like finally I felt safe enough and comfortable in my own family to step outside and open that part of myself up again.”

The Raise Your Voice star’s return to music doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. She did, after all, allude to as much in September, when she shared a series of photos of herself in the recording studio with her husband, music producer Matthew Koma, on Instagram, alongside the not-so-cryptic caption “new music … or something 🪩✨🍒.”

The “Come Clean” singer also teased her musical renaissance a few weeks earlier, when she celebrated the 22nd anniversary of her second studio album, Metamorphosis. In a lengthy Instagram caption, Duff reflected on the “pretty epic adventure” of crafting the record, before signing off with “To be continued…”

It appears that Koma, who shares daughters Banks Violet, Mae James and Townes Meadow with Duff and is the stepfather to Duff’s son, Luca, from her previous marriage, is helping bring his wife’s newest musical era to fruition. The Brooklyn native has previously produced tracks for artists including Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, Carly Rae Jepsen as well as Duff. On Duff’s 38th birthday, in September, Koma all but confirmed that a new album was on the way.

“Working on your album with you this year, on your terms, framed how it works for you, has been the f***ing best and I can’t wait for the world to hear what it sounds like when you get to speak directly to your people without anything or anyone standing in the way,” he wrote on Instagram. “I’ll be cheering front row (not actually cause Ticketmaster has this new queue system so probably more like row 6), but I’ll be there.”

Koma’s heartfelt tribute came months after he urged Duff to “go save millennial pop music” on Mother’s Day. “It needs you now more than ever,” he wrote on Instagram.

“Mature” marks Duff’s first new song since “Sparks,” the leading single from her Koma-produced fifth studio album, Breathe In. Breathe Out., which debuted in 2015. In an Instagram post celebrating that album’s 10th anniversary, Duff noted that there was “still some work on the record that felt authentic” despite it not having “major success.”

A decade later, Duff is ready to reemerge. The mom of four has already made some big moves: She inked a contract with Atlantic Records in September and has a new docuseries about her return to music on the way, which will be directed by Sam Wrench, whose recent work includes A Nonsense Christmas With Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. 

“I always knew I was going to return to music. I needed to feel safe and I needed to have the right people in my corner and be absolutely 100% ready,” she told Variety in October. “Honestly, I needed to have 10 years of life under my belt. I needed a lot to say. This album feels like the inner workings of my brain and I really am so excited to connect with people again on that level, that very forward-facing level.”