Miley Cyrus’ career reads like a modern monomyth. From child stardom to public controversy and, finally, redemption (and a couple dozen award ceremonies along the way), the singer’s entire life has played out in front of the public eye. So, what’s left for an artist who has quite literally completed the ‘hero’s journey’? Well, only “The End of the World”.
On her ninth studio album, Something Beautiful, released today (May 30), Cyrus takes a sharp left turn into the realm of avant-garde. Having spent the previous eight projects grappling with her public persona and seeking stable ground as an artist, the release is defined by a look outwards – with Cyrus herself announcing that Something Beautiful is attempting to “medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music”.
Reportedly taking cues from Pink Floyd’s The Wall’s emphasis on operatic storytelling, Cyrus’ ninth album forgoes traditional pop songwriting in favour of extended detours into shoegaze, psychedelic rock, and even a hint of ambient electronica – new ground even for Cyrus’ already extensive catalogue. Suffice to say, Something Beautiful marks yet another rebrand for a pop star who seems to have always been there, but never quite what we expected.
Below, in light of Something Beautiful’s release, we revisit five iconic tracks that represent five distinct eras in Miley Cyrus’ musical evolution.
This is where it all started. At just 13 years old, Cyrus broke into the public eye with her own dedicated Disney Channel TV series Hannah Montana, starring alongside her father and country music superstar Billy-Ray Cyrus. Looking back almost 20 years later, at a time where children’s media consists almost entirely of Minecraft, YouTube and Roblox, it’s hard to emphasise just how much of a cultural impact this series had. Averaging 5 million viewers across its entire five-year runtime, and winning Cyrus multiple entertainment awards, Hannah Montana left an unforgettable mark on an entire generation, with even breakout UK rapper YT frequently referencing the show to describe his own double life as a rapper and Oxford University student.
For Cyrus herself, however, the show was a lot of pressure. In 2008, when she was just 15 years old, Disney Channel president Gary Marsh proclaimed that “being a good girl is now a business decision [for Miley Cyrus]”, while Billy-Ray announced that the show had “destroyed [his] family” by driving his daughter towards erratic behaviour. As it turns out, Hannah Montana’s emphasis on having the “Best of Both Worlds” would become strangely prophetic, as Cyrus soon began to struggle with the balance between personal and public image.
Cyrus soon began to grow out of her squeaky-clean Disney persona. Hannah Montana ended in 2011, amid videos circulating of an 18-year-old Miley allegedly smoking the psychedelic herb salvia, and controversy surrounding her decision to pole dance on stage at the 2010 Teen Choice Awards. Households across the world struggled to come to terms with Cyrus’ increasingly sexualised aesthetic, but it’s easy to forget that she was still just a teenager whose entire adolescence had played out in front of the camera.
Anyway, Miley’s rebellion era produced some of her most compelling music to date. 2013 album Bangerz – which gave us teen angst anthem “We Can’t Stop” and, of course, “Wrecking Ball” – is a wholly robust pop-rock project featuring superstars-of-the-day Britney Spears, Future and Nelly. Meanwhile, 2015’s follow-up psychedelic rock album Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz leaned further into edginess with Cyrus allegedly rebelling against her label’s insistence that the project was too long by including a full recording of her playing Tibetan singing bowls on the project. Cyrus was at her most antagonistic yet, but the music was iconic.
In 2017, Cyrus was looking to distance herself from controversy and announced that she was “leaning into her roots”. Resulting country album Younger Now, featuring a guest appearance from Dolly Parton, attempted to address Cyrus’ previous rebellion era, with lead single “Younger Now” including a childhood picture of the controversial pop star on the cover alongside the lyrics: “Even though it’s not who I am, I’m not afraid of who I used to be… I feel so much younger now.”
Cyrus was clearly trying to find new feet as an adult in the pop world, but it didn’t quite click. Despite obviously being country royalty, Younger Now was panned by critics as “bland” and uninventive while, even before the album had released, Cyrus announced that she was already “over it” and that the sound wasn’t “exactly the home [she was looking for]”. Meanwhile, a messy foray into politics, which saw Miley endorse Bernie Sanders and then Hilary Clinton, while also trying to appeal to young conservatives with an invocation of old country western nostalgia (something she has since apologised for), only hammered home this sense of Younger Now as an uncomfortable transition period.
In the years following Younger Now, Cyrus embarked on a period of soul-searching. 2020 release Plastic Hearts saw a tentative return to pop music with a guest feature from Dua Lipa, but it was on 2023 album Endless Summer Vacation that Miley truly emerged as the pop icon she was always meant to be. The project arrives with a sense of harmony, with lead single – and the single best-selling track of 2023 – “Flowers” representing Cyrus finally finding peace within herself. “I can buy myself flowers,” she sings. “I can love me better.”
After countless nominations, Endless Summer Vacation finally won Cyrus the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album while, in a touching full-circle moment, the project seems to combine all of her musical iterations up to that point. There’s her distinctive country ‘twang’ and layered, psychedelic guitars all wrapped up in the standout dance-pop album.
Enter: Something Beautiful. Cyrus’ latest album incorporates an amalgam of 70s sonics, from shoegaze through to psychedelic rock, and was reportedly inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Wall. While it may lack the obvious smash hits that Endless Summer Vacation had, it continues to show off the star’s growing comfort in her artistic identity.
Running through the entire album are conversations with an unknown love interest, which appear to be a metaphor for something bigger. With lines like “Witnessing my body standing in a mirror, aching to be seen, aching to become real”, this love interest appears to be a stand-in for a toxic relationship with fame and body image. But, on the project’s orchestral, musical theatre-esque climax “Give Me Love”, a more general sense of ‘love’ for life itself seems to reemerge as the solution to Something Beautiful’s central tensions. It may not quite be on a par with Pink Floyd, but the project’s emphasis on ‘big idea’ storytelling shows an artist who is continuing to explore and establish her own creative freedom. In that, there is Something Beautiful indeed.
Miley Cyrus’ ninth studio album, Something Beautiful, is out now.