Hilary Duff on Nicole Richie

With a new album, Dignity, out now to promote, Hilary Duff is opening up about her ex-boyfriend, Good Charlotte singer Joel Madden, and his famous for nothing new girlfriend, Nicole Richie.

Says the Duffster, "We're not great friends like we were. We had a great relationship, and I will always care about him and want him to be happy. It just sucks that because he's dating someone who's a personality, too, people try and pit us against each other."

While some might think the "other woman" in the song Gypsy, which Duff co-wrote with her sister Haylie, it's actually about her parents' divorce, which happened last year and the family kept very quiet.

"This is so hard to talk about," Duff says of her parents' bitter split. "For some reason, I was embarrassed that my family wasn't perfect and that some woman had broken it up."

The song Stranger was also inspired by Hilary's turbulent family life in the past 12 months.

"Stranger is a song I wrote about how my mom must feel around my dad," she says. "I made it seem like it was about a relationship I was in, because I didn't want people to know about my parents. But I've realized that so many people can relate to what I've gone through."

Of her own relationship with Madden, Duff adds, "Everyone made a big deal out of him being older. I was, like, 16 and he was 25. But I didn't think it was a big thing. I didn't go to high school; how could I meet someone my age? What would we talk about?"

For now, Hilary is having fun being single. And she means it!

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