Miley Cyrus has always followed her muse. Since at least her 2013 reinvention “Bangerz,” she’s tried on multiple personas and styles, traipsing from du jour hip-hop to glam rock and glitter-smeared psychedelia, oftentimes falling somewhere in between. If anything, one could never accuse Cyrus of ambivalence; her creative vision is always whole, even when it defies tangibility.
It’s one reason why Cyrus’ albums have continued to draw intrigue. Some hit, others don’t. That much became clear with 2023’s “Endless Summer Vacation,” one of her most immediate and of-the-moment albums, where playing it straight paid off. Lead single “Flowers” was a ubiquitous smash, a Grammy record of the year winner, a reminder that when Cyrus wants The Single, she knows how to bake it.
“Something Beautiful,” her ninth album, isn’t that, at least not in the sense that she’s attempting to appeal to as wide an audience. The sprawling record, with its elaborate arrangements and lengthy songs, isn’t a return to form, or even a defiant rejection of artistic conformity like 2015’s “Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.” Instead, “Something Beautiful” is an elevated experiment — one without an obvious single — and a project bursting with ideas stretched to their extremes while exploring the textures and sounds of the artists that inspired her.
Much of the online discourse in pop circles has focused on the album’s hit potential, or lack thereof. Cyrus herself acknowledged this during a private preview of “Something Beautiful” at Los Angeles’ Chateau Marmont earlier this week: “My next album is about to be extremely experimental, so have fun with that,” she said. It’s a project that almost encourages a polarizing reaction, a rejection of expectation in the face of later career success that pop stars can only hope to achieve.
In effect, “Something Beautiful” is equal parts thrilling and challenging. Cyrus crafts songs that linger without losing their way, deconstructing and rebuilding the idea of how pop songs should be shaped. The closest approximations to conventional pop motifs — the strongest ones on the record — err on bombast and balladry. “More to Lose,” for instance, is truest to form, an instant tally on Cyrus’ wall of heartbreak, while the title track saunters from a soul-speckled strut to a confronting, discordant explosion.
Much of the rest of the album trades in the sticky hooks of “Endless Summer Vacation” for genre case studies. It’s easy to play spot-the-reference (Fleetwood Mac on “Easy Lover,” Giorgio Moroder on “Walk of Fame,” even Lady Gaga on “Reborn”), yet Cyrus manages to maintain as a grounding force. Above all, the one commonality across these songs is that they’re all specifically her, as varied and distinct as they may be, threading a narrative where there often doesn’t appear to be one.
Cyrus herself teed this up during the album rollout, likening it to Pink Floyd’s epic opus “The Wall” and describing its accompanying film as a “pop opera.” Those lofty designations don’t exactly hold — the film itself is a series of gorgeous, high-fashion music videos — although they do speak to her ambition. “Something Beautiful” invites the listener to drift across the touchpoints of her creative compass without it feeling forced. She seamlessly mashes up Donna Summer glam with New Order synths on the excellent “Walk of Fame” as guest vocalist Brittany Howard appears as a haunting specter; enlists Naomi Campbell to back her as she plays catwalk assassin on the pulsating “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved”; and effortlessly evokes the Swedish-pop gleam of ABBA on “End of the World.”
For the casual listener, finding a way into the album may be its greatest obstacle. The ’70s-evoking folk fare that dots the front half of the record greatly contrasts with the dance floor throb of the latter, and few of the hooks hit as hard as some of her previous work. But what it lacks in accessibility, it makes up for in scope. “Something Beautiful” is a record that attempts to show that Cyrus can do it all in ways that you wouldn’t expect, or maybe even want. That she does it so convincingly and confidently doesn’t seem so much a rebuking of her past success as it does an evolution of it.
Cyrus is the rare minted pop star whose experimentalism can often be secondary to her star power. Audiences return to Cyrus because she doesn’t follow a template or play the game like you should. Because of that, she’s one of the few main pop girls whose records will capture the zeitgeist even when they don’t have broad appeal. “Something Beautiful” is not for everyone; at the Chateau, she described it as “just an appetizer.” In reality, it’s a record for Cyrus, a complex and confronting snapshot of who she is and where she’s heading.