Miley Cyrus is one of those characters who when you think about it you say “incredible”. Incredible that it is still here, to make music, apparently happy, after that childhood from crazy spent to act in the TV series and after being printed on backpacks, notebooks and everything that can be purchased by the girls born in the late 90s. Incredible how she managed to evolve and above all to make us completely forget that world that had created it and that, as happened in many similar cases, could have disintegrated it in a moment.
Miley Cyrus has instead managed to build a outlined and above all long road. At 33 (considering the age in which he started), he showed that he has things to say, above and under the stage, and above all to tell her a bit like it went to her. Because of Miley we remember the songs, but we also remember a decidedly not very domeful character and a split look, yes, but kindly braggart. Miley is one who when he is in love throws you out a record full of love songs, who when he needs to annoy callma Wayne Coyne and publishes on Soundcloud (with probably the curse of his label) an album like Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petzdedicated to his animals who left us.
In the middle there was a country disc, a glam pop, a very underestimated EP and then also the incredible one that was Flowersmanifesto of all single people and who are enough for themselves and who earned her the first Grammy of her career. And today, two years after its biggest success, Miley has not tried to repeat the formula. It has changed again. Why Something Beautiful It is an ambitious operation, presented largely with a documentary document (it seems) inspired by The wall Of the Pink Floyd (“but with more glitter”, she says). We didn't see the feature film, but we heard the disc. And it is a set of things in which Miley seems to immediately want to make it clear that it has been going on, again, while always looking back.
Photo: Glen Luchford
If we were to tell you how it is compared to the previous works, which yes they had a clear identity, even aesthetic, is more complex here. There are great melodies (Golden Burning Sun Perhaps our favorite), there are references to the 70s and 80s, there is soft rock and there are the torn ballads. The title track could call it nu soul, to say, before that guitar solo that tears it in two. There are choral traces. A bit as if all the Miley of the first had met in the studio to pull a point.
We would call it a Slow Burner, one of those who must be listened sometimes and that where at the first listening perhaps it leaves you only the desire to listen to it better. We had already listened to some traces, like The End of the Worldthe first single: a hymn to living the present, so much “does not end the world”. Seventies atmospheres that we will find in many disk productions. As in Easy Loveranother very playful piece (Sorry). But the Rétro atmospheres continue in how Every girl you've ever lovedwhich on the piano could be the most poignant piece in the world, and instead with the production made of synth and sax it becomes the perfect pre -record soundtrack (and there is also a feat. Of Naomi Campbell, yes).
We would generally say that Something Beautiful Something beautiful really is. Also because it seems precisely the album of a woman who knows where it comes from and continues on the path of change. Not surprisingly, we said before, when he left the tracks he always hit. Even if here, rather than leaving the tracks, we could talk about crossings: as if all the mileys of the past had found themselves in the studio to create something nostalgic but at the same time contemporary. On the album there is not only Naomi: there is also Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes that places some of his vocals on Walk of Fametrace that only the glitter on the floor of a small underground disco will think of you.
The obvious thing about Miley's career is that it is always very difficult to predict how his work will go to the rankings. Some things are fine, others less. However, she goes on and tries to do what she likes. In this album, for example, those who expect to find one Flowers It will be disappointed. It is difficult to apply to a song to get ferried into the project. There is not, or at least there is not yet a dominance single who catches the people who listen to the radio and drag them inside Something Beautiful. There are songs that must be given some time, full of references to the artists I like: Moroder, Abba, Fleetwood Mac, to say three.
Something Beautiful It is also a disk of long tracks, and if we want out of fashion for 2025 (there are four, five and even six minutes songs). In short, we could serenely say that it is a sophisticated job in which Miley tries once again not to be pigeonholed. Beyond radio hits there is something more: taste, research, change. Give him a chance, otherwise see you at the next. So much “not the end of the world”.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
