The Pop Corporation

When an artist makes certain demands to be taken seriously, more often than not, the knives come out. It may be unfair that the landscape of music journalism can praise one artist for having lofty ambitions, while deriding another for the same thing, but that’s always been the way.

We find ourselves with Miley’s new album, ‘Something Beautiful’, which has been promoted with a promise of being a new version of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ – an album we don’t care for, but have at it, we suppose. Archival high fashion has been a buzz phrase that accompanied this release too, but again, we’re a music website and while it is passingly interesting, it’s not something we care about, so will leave that to someone else who presumably cares about Thierry Mugler’s pieces.

The whole roll-out of the album has been promised as being something experimental, but as a lowly music critic, it is hard to look beyond the noise of artifice, because we’re just trying to get at the music. The glitz and loftiness isn’t so much a turn-off, rather, it’s been getting in the way and now it has become apparent that the noise and dissent around the album is in danger of swallowing it.

There’s a prevailing feeling from those outside of Miley’s camp that all this seriousness is rather hallow, and that she forgot to make a good album. However, you need to side-step the consensus and weigh it all up, like you’d weigh any other album up. Is it all really that bad? Is it, as a project, guilty of things that would have been excused elsewhere?

Fact is, there’s something about Miley Cyrus’ voice that has a magic in it which makes you sit up and take notice, whether or not you’re into what she’s doing. Cyrus’ career has been all over the place, and given that she’s a pop star, that’s something that should at least be applauded. Even when she’s working within a strict Top 40 formula, there’s enough originality in Miley’s approach that you know you’re not dealing with Just Some Singer. There’s a smokiness – a crack – in Cyrus’ voice that is so identifiably her, that when it works, it’s fantastic.

However, that’s a voice that sings “the TV’s on but I don’t know – my tears are streaming like our favourite show,” and you have to roll your eyes. In a spoken word segment, she’s saying “like when following an image from a train, your eyes can’t keep the passing landscapes from being swallowed into endless distance,” which makes you wonder if you’d hammer someone else for saying it or not.

Then, there’s “a tower that’s made of risqué, rude temptation,” which just snaps you out of the moment, and not in a good way, with unadultered Jim Morrison fluff.

With a track like ‘Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved’, we find Naomi Campbell on guest vocals in some kind of ballroom appropriation, deadpanning “she has the perfect scent”, “she speaks the perfect French” and “she never wears a watch, still she’s never late”, cut up with the word “POSE”, and you wonder if it’s worth all this thought. We were promised her “gayest” album yet, but if the current queer underground is anything to go by, this ballroom bait stuff has long been musty, instead, freakier, more hedonistic, with harder industrial strength four-to-the-floor action.

That said, it’s a serviceable album. The Guardian wrote that it was “about as psychedelic as a baked potato”, which is funny and pithy and all that, but it’s not an abject listening experience. Maybe the talk that preceded it came in too hot? Maybe we should think about what this album will sound like in a few years’ time when we can’t remember the press run for it?

‘Easy Lover’ is distracting enough that you wouldn’t change the station with it’s neon Americana, and ‘Reborn’ is a fun enough slab of gonzo-disco that, if anyone else had released it, you wouldn’t be heaping so much meaning on it. Forget whether or not this meant to be some kind of new twist on the concept album, forget the costumes, forget all the chatter and loftiness that clouds your judgement about it – fact is, there’s sections of this album that are decent enough.

Let’s not forget that this is Miley Cyrus – the same woman who have a huge hit with ‘Bangerz’ and promptly went about putting out the ‘Dead Petz’ project which featured the Flaming Lips and featured her fucking around with her playing Tibetan singing bowls. The plot might be thin on this record, but she’s certainly not the first artist to say there’s a concept to an album and left everyone wondering if they can spot it. Prog’s ills are varied and storied, and if you’re enjoying the pomp of some Hall of Famer progressive LPs and overlooking any shortcomings, then it feels disingenuous to malign Cyrus for the same.

Add to this, the overt seriousness of the FKA Twigs campaign, which has been met with some resistance, but reviews that are much more kind. You have to wonder what the subtext is when people are so willing to scoff in the face of what they expect a pop singer to do.

Maybe this whole thing is just a product of 2025, where any solipsism is met with raised eyebrows in that, we’re besieged by financial woes, war and authoritarians, and for someone to pull out vintage frocks that are absurdly decadent, in an album that focuses on the idea of being lonely at the top and stardom, are tales for a different era.

Perhaps the key word here is ‘decadence’, with nods to ’80s disco, even Daft Punk’s luxurious take on house, Bobby O, ABBA – which are all noble reference points. However, you wonder how much better this album would have been if she’d given in to the crassness that made those reference points come so alive in the first place.

This album may not reach the heights of the hype that came before it, but is it terrible? That’s unfair. In places, there’s some of that Miley magic, but you suspect that whatever happens next, will be more focused and grab Miley’s feverish fans by the lapels.