Miley Cyrus has spent her whole career mutating and evolving, making drastic musical left turns. She went from Hannah Montana to the indie-sleaze neon orgy that was Bangerz, the ultimate “Disney kid breaks free” statement. But that turned out to be just one of the many Mileys we’d get to know — over the next decade, she moved on to the stoner prog-rock of her Flaming Lips project Dead Petz, to the rootsy country of Younger Now, to the Eighties electro power-glitz of Plastic Hearts. Some thought Endless Summer Vacation was as far as she could ever go.
But on Something Beautiful, she’s aiming higher than ever, with her most ambitious and introspective tunes. She’s also made an upcoming companion film of the same name, which drops on June 6. She’s not striving for hits — there isn’t another “Flowers” here. She’s got loftier goals for this one, calling it “a concept album that’s an attempt to medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music.”
Miley’s been talking it up as being inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Wall, their bleak 1979 classic about rock-star alienation and isolation. She says this album is “The Wall, but with a better wardrobe and more glamorous and filled with pop culture.” (Quite honestly, going up against Roger Waters in a fashion battle is setting the bar a bit low.) It’s not her first Floyd moment, since she sang a memorable “Wish You Were Here” on SNL as a pandemic lament.
All over the album she returns to the theme of healing, looking for moments of beauty in the darkness. She gets help from producer Shawn Everett and a killer ensemble of rock luminaries, from Flea and Danielle Haim to indie rockers like Model/Actriz’s Cole Haden, Foxygen’s Jonathan Radio, and the War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel. Talk about range: this has to be the first album to include duets with both Brittany Howard, from the roots-rockers Alabama Shakes, and supermodel Naomi Campbell.
Something Beautiful begins with a poetic “Prelude” where Miley shares her thoughts about letting go of the past and moving on to the future, “aching to be seen, aching to be real.” “Walk of Fame” is one of the peaks, her electro pep talk on self-esteem (“Every time I walk, it’s a walk of fame”) with Howard making herself right at home in the disco glitz. It’s essentially a tribute to Seventies producer Giorgio Moroder, just as “Easy Lover” and “Golden Burning Sun” go for the laid-back vibe of Fleetwood Mac.
“End of the World” goes for Abba-tooled Euro-pop, vowing to “throw a party like McCartney with some help from our friends.” The title track begins as a soft neo-soul ballad until it flips into distorted electro-noise. “More to Lose” is a massive Eighties-style power ballad that addresses the end of a relationship, where she sees her once-cherished ex as “a movie star in a worn-out coat.”
But the sentimental favorite has to be “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved,” a fantastic disco twirl with Campbell. It’s a welcome musical comeback for the Nineties fashion icon, 30 years after her unjustly forgotten one-off trip-hop oddity Baby Woman, not to mention her famous Vanilla Ice duet “Cool As Ice (Everybody Get Loose).” Miley sings an invitation to romance, purring, “Aren’t I pretty enough for more than fun in the dark?” Campbell plays the spoken-word hype woman, telling us all how awesome Miley is: “She’s got that kind of grace/Did Botticelli paint her face?/She’s got the perfect scent/She speaks the perfect French.” It ends with a walk-off where both women chant “Pose, pose, pose!” It’s also got the album’s gnarliest Eighties sax solo — and there’s a load of those, because Miley is obviously in a very sax-solo place right now.
“Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved” is the loosest, most playful song on the album, but also the one that best illustrates the redemptive spirit she’s going for on Something Beautiful. All over the album, Miley sings about keeping her chin up and looking on the positive side, even in times of trouble, which makes this album basically the opposite of The Wall, which was all about having a bad time at a rock show. But Something Beautiful is another bold swerve in one of pop’s most delightfully unpredictable careers.
