“Oh, I forgot – I’m supposed to sing every fucking line.” This, a line from a recent Miley show at the Hollywood Bowl, where 18,000 eager fans hoped that, yes, she might want to sing for them.

See, in 2026, Cyrus has found herself in a bit of a jam. She’s disarmingly honest (which makes a nice change from the PR ready stars elsewhere), but she’s also in a job she doesn’t look like she wants to do. In addition to that, the material she is doing feels like something her fans don’t want.

Concerning the latter, it isn’t unusual for a star to dig their heels in. Some might even say “fuck you – you’ve had the hits – I’m doing whatever I want now, so deal with it”, and that sometimes works. There’s plenty of artists in pop history who have scrapped the idea of touring so they can pour everything into their recorded output – Kate Bush and The Beatles have famously done it, and it didn’t harm their careers.

However, Miley seems troubled. She’s been spiky lately, and it doesn’t seem to be in the fun way.

And so, to new album ‘Bass Persuades’, which has come with a lot of high falutin’ talk and a pushback against what Miley thinks is expected of her. She’s dropped the surname, and so too, the AOR rock and power ballads of ‘Wrecking Ball’. Fair enough – house music is so back.

However, we wonder when the last time Miley went to an underground club and was afforded the chance to really dance. Like Beyoncé’s house album, there’s passable stabs at club music, but the grit and sweat of house music is difficult to recreate when you lead a manicured life.

So when she sings “these kids don’t wanna dance – we can’t stay like this forever”, you wonder who these kids might be, because every weekend, the kids have rediscovered their love of uppers and doof doof music, no question.

In the more gently experimental moments, you can almost hear the album this could have been, more interesting than the largely serviceable dance music that’s offered. Maybe we’re reading into things that aren’t there, but there’s a sense that this album is saying ‘is this too much of a departure for you? Is this too weird?’, when broadly, it really isn’t a very weird album at all. In fact, it sounds a bit old fashioned if anything, harking back to William Orbit’s Madonna production, which let’s not forget, was released nearly 30 years ago.

There’s moments, like on ‘Innocent Ways’, where you’re thinking about tracks from the likes of Republica, marrying pop rock and dance beats, and sincerely, Republica may have had some hits, but it sounded old hat back in the ’90s – music designed for people who didn’t really love rock or electronic music.

There’s no heady drops, no joy of repetition, and seemingly, a misunderstanding of the source material. In 2026, it’s not particularly daring to make a house record, given that the biggest stars have already gone to clubland.

So overall, we’re not sure what this is for. And we usually like Miley and she seems like a decent enough person. You wonder if the life of stardom has grated on her so much, that she might take stock, semi retire for a bit and find herself. Other artists have done it – hardly comparable, but look at how happy Hilary Duff seems these days, right?

Miley will be fine, and this isn’t some kind of career-ender, but she’s given everyone more than enough, that she’s absolutely able to take some time off to satiate herself without worrying about what anyone else thinks of her. On the strength of this album, it sounds like she could do with a holiday.