On August 16, 2005, the American pop duo Aly & AJ — consisting of sisters Alyson and Amanda Michalka — released their debut studio album Into the Rush. This pop-rock project—distributed by The Walt Disney Company’s label, Hollywood Records— garnered positive receptions from critics and the general public, and the album did well commercially with 25,000 copies sold in the first week.
While this was a great start for the pair’s music career, they did not experience the height of their fame until the release of their third studio album, Insomniatic, on July 10, 2007. This pop work, with electronic elements and synthesizers, is one that produced the popular singles “Potential Breakup Song” and “Like Whoa”, with the latter track being the song that they are still mostly known for having been played on an episode of the reality television show The Hills, and in the movie High School Musical 3: Senior Year. The album landed on the Billboard 200 chart at number 15 and had 39,000 copies sold in the first week, thus gaining the two international fans. Insomniatic is still their most commercially successful LP to date.
Also, it is important to note that the triumph of this album was in part due to their popularity on Disney Channel. On the network, Aly was known for her role as Keely Teslow on the sitcom Phil of the Future, and both women co-starred in the television movie Cow Belles.
Following Insomniatic, it seemed like Aly & AJ was going to continue to dominate the teen pop sphere. However, that all changed once the group left Hollywood Records in 2009 after various delays to their fourth studio album. After that, the duo practically disappeared from the limelight. Since their decision to leave the Disney company in its entirety, many who were fans of them as children and teens in the 2000s have wondered, what happened to Aly & AJ?
In 2017, the two made an official comeback with the release of their EP Ten Years through their own label Aly & AJ Music, LLC. From there, they released another EP titled Sanctuary in 2019, and their fourth studio album A Touch of the Beat Gets You Up on Your Feet Gets You Out and Then Into the Sun. Each project has or will be accompanied by international tours. To add on, due to the traction “Potential Breakup Song” got on TikTok, the two rerecorded the track with some explicit lyrics absent from the original.
Despite Aly & AJ not being as popular as they once were, the duo is still going strong with regular releases of singles. Plus, they have a dedicated fanbase comprising of old fans from their Disney days to new ones that were first introduced to them through their late 2010’s work. These women are nowhere near the end of their musical careers. It will be exciting to see where they will go from here.