August 2025 was a busy month for nostalgic millennial milestones. We gave movie theaters across America a boost in Freakier Friday ticket sales. Demi Lovato and the Jonas Brothers not only reunited but performed onstage together. Hilary Duff wrote a personal tribute to her 2003 Metamorphosis album on its anniversary. On August 15, Aly & AJ released a live Into the Rush 20th anniversary album, which was recorded in Des Plaines, IL, in June 2023.
I listened to this live album on a particularly challenging mental health day. “Into the rush now, you Don’t have to know how, know it all before you try,” the sisters sing on the title track. I leaned into that idea, of not knowing it all before I try, in the moment.
How many of us, at some point in the past 20 years, have had a cozy feeling associating the song “Rush” with 2005 the Disney Channel Original Movie Twitches? How many of us attempted to draw the famous half-heart butterfly we saw inside Aly & Aj’s album jacket? How many of us had sleepovers with friends as we sang along to this music and let these lyrics sink in? The various “yeses” to those questions probably represent a good cross-section of original Aly & AJ fans.
In August 2005, I was starting middle school and was wholly unprepared for the way almost everyone else in my class would grow up a little sooner than me (or so it seemed). I picked up Into the Rush from Family Christian Bookstore, the same place where you’d find BarlowGirl, ZoeGirl, or a new study Bible.
The place of purchase has little to do with the lyrical content. Yes, the songs are wholesome, but they’re not prayers or praises. They are stories of sisters finding their voices and expressing the realities of their teenage lives. (they actually wrote “Protecting Me” about their parents, and as fans know, “On the Ride” is about their sisterhood).
On the anniversary album, I loved hearing AJ speak to the crowd about how “Out of the Blue” (her “first heartbreak song”) was a sequel to “Something More.” The tracks unfold from a budding relationship to its sudden dissolution.
Looking back on “Speak for Myself,” I don’t think middle school Allison could feel the weight of the lyrics, “You suffocate me, You drown me out.” But Aly & AJ send new strength into the chorus, “I will, I will speak for myself. What You see isn’t all I am,” as they sing the words in unison on the live anniversary recording.
songs on Into the Rush are honest, and they frequently linger in minor keys, inviting us then and now to connect with music or lyrics that we can relate to. I keep coming back to the line in “Collapsed,” “I overthought, so I locked up My heart.” Maybe I’m meant to hear that louder now so that I don’t lock myself up so easily.
It means something to me that Aly & AJ care about their early music and have spent the last couple of years reflecting on their start. If they can still sing “No One,” “Sticks and Stones” and “On the Ride,” I will still let these songs wash over me. I don’t want to lose the ability that I had as a tween to take great songs to heart and find my own feelings in them.
The anniversary album closes with two songs from Insomniatic, “Chemicals React” and “Potential Breakup Song.” The latter was “a true encore” and was only performed when the crowd wouldn’t stop chanting for Aly & AJ. We’re not kids in our rooms listening to our boom boxes anymore, but Aly & AJ’s work (old and new) affords us a similar intimacy in our current lives.
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