‘Girls’ get ready to rock the night away

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, May 10, 2007

On Sunday night, four women will take the stage at the Everett Events Center – each with something to prove.

Fergie, Hilary Duff, Katharine McPhee and Lily Allen will come together in KISS 106.1 FM’s “Girls’ Night Out” concert. And while their styles and backgrounds are fairly different, they’re each coming out with a slight chip on their shoulders.

Fergie looks to prove she can make it as a solo artist, Duff wants to shed her teen queen image, McPhee aims to work her way out of the “American Idol” shadow and Allen, well, she might just be trying to prove she can show up.

Sunday’s show is one of just a handful that the British pop star didn’t cancel on the homestretch of her U.S. tour. The often foul-mouthed Allen is a sensation back home, but has had a tough time breaking onto the American music scene with her debut album, “Alright, Still.”

Weeks before the announcement of her cancellations, a downtrodden Allen wrote on her MySpace.com blog, “Is it really important to break America? … I’m bored.”

Fergie is too busy to be bored, touring in support of her first solo album, “The Dutchess.” It was just a year ago that she was rocking the Everett Events Center with her hip-hop quartet, Black Eyed Peas. The group is still intact – fellow “Pea” will.i.am served as executive producer on her solo album – but Fergie spread her wings like never before with “The Dutchess,” which was released in September.

“This is not a small project for me,” Fergie told “Entertainment Weekly.” “This is my destiny. This is huge. I’ve been waiting my whole life (to make a solo album). A lot of times, in the context of the Peas, it’s inappropriate for me to express all of my drama on our album, so this is my chance to do that.”

Fergie shares a Disney Channel past with Duff, as she was on the show “Kids Incorporated,” while Duff leaped to fame on “Lizzie McGuire.”

Duff embodies a more mature, sophisticated sound and style on her third studio album, “Dignity,” which was released last month and peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard charts. The pastels are gone, the hair is dark.

“It just happened,” Duff told London’s Sunday Mail. “It is not like a conscious change. I am changing. It is that time in my life right now. … Maybe there is a little of a preconceived image of who I am, but that is (the case) with everyone that is in the public eye.”

McPhee knows a little about the public eye. She was runner-up on the biggest TV show around, “American Idol,” last season. Like so many other “Idol” runner-ups, the show was just the launching pad McPhee needed.

“After the season finale … Simon Cowell came up to me and was like, ‘You’re going to have to really stretch your wings and show your personality more, because I really don’t think America knows, like, really who you are,’ ” McPhee says on her video blog. “I think (this album) shows a different side of me, a more current side of me, a more young side of me.”

But while McPhee is trying to make a name for herself with her self-titled debut album, she isn’t running away from her “Idol” past.

“I know where I came from,” she told AOL. “Your credibility, if you become successful, will come. Kelly Clarkson has made herself very credible and accepted. And I don’t think there’s any rush to separate yourself. I think people are accepting ‘Idol’ more and more as a legitimate competition for talent.”

Reporter Victor Balta: victor.a.balta@gmail.com.