Endless Summer Vacation shows Miley Cyrus’ versatility, but it’s a step back :: Dancehall Reggae :: Forums

adikate954

Posted March 10, 2023 12:10 PM

Miley Cyrus has done it all.

She’s been Hannah Montana, a tongue-wagging twerkster, Ashley O in “Black Mirror” and, thanks to her stellar covers of “Jolene” and “Heart of Glass,” the last person you ever want to face off against in a karaoke contest.

On her eighth studio album, “Endless Summer Vacation” (out Friday), Cyrus packs it all into one, showcasing the versatility that has kept her on the music charts for nearly two decades.

But in bouncing from one genre to the next, she risks losing the cohesion that is key to a fillerless record like her superb 2020 release, “Plastic Hearts,” making “Endless Summer Vacation” feel like a step back.

One minute Cyrus is harmonizing with Brandi Carlile on “Thousand Miles,” an acoustic midtempo that harks back to her Disney Channel days, and the next she’s talk-singing over the experimental beats of “Handstand,” which taps into the weirdness of her critically panned 2015 album, “Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.”

Cyrus, 30, has never been one to play by the rules, though. She admits as much on “Wildcard,” singing that while she “could stay and not break your heart,” she won’t make any promises.

Much of “Endless Summer Vacation” is inspired by the ups and downs of love.

The psychedelic groove “Rose Colored Lenses” stunningly romanticizes the honeymoon phase of a relationship, and “You” (which features rich vocals but is poorly mixed compared to the previously released live version) finds Cyrus searching for “that late-night sweet magic, that forever-lasting love.”

The Grammy nominee — who was previously married to Liam Hemsworth and is currently dating fellow musician Maxx Morando — admittedly hits some bumps on the road to companionship, though.

On the biting, “Bangerz”-stype trap song “Muddy Feet,” she catches a partner cheating as she snarls, “Get the f–k out of my house with that s–t / Get the f–k out of my life with that s–t.”

The rock ballad “Jaded,” meanwhile, calls out an ex who is “not even willing” to admit their mistakes, instead heading “down to the bar ’til [they’re] blurry.” It’s the true gem of the album, showcasing Cyrus’ vocal prowess as she sings, “We went to hell, but we never came back.”

In the end, Cyrus wastes no time dusting off her hands and moving on — with herself.

The LP’s lead single, “Flowers” mourns the “kind of dream that can’t be sold” before she learns the importance of self-love: “I can take myself dancing / And I can hold my own hand / Yeah, I can love me better than you can,” she belts during the chorus of what has deservedly become her biggest hit since 2013’s “Wrecking Ball.”

And the aptly titled and irresistibly catchy tropical number “Island” is all about the perspective that follows a breakup, with a newly single Cyrus dipping her toes in the sand and pondering, “Am I stranded on an island or have I landed in paradise?”

But even she knows solitude isn’t always the solution. On the album’s stripped-back, piano-driven closer, “Wonder Woman,” Cyrus warbles, “When her favorite record’s on and she’s dancing in the dark / She can’t stop her eyes from welling up.”

The tearjerker’s third-person narrative is intriguing. Has Cyrus, the seemingly fearless artist who’s become the voice of a generation, been putting on a brave face this whole time?

Who knows? Maybe she’s just being Miley after all.

Miley Cyrus: Endless Summer Vacation review – gossip, grit and glorious pop

After years trying to reconcile chart success with her leftfield musical instincts, the singer has delivered a hazily atmospheric album that plays to her provocative strengths

It says something about the degree of anticipation around Miley Cyrus’s eighth studio album that it was leaked, turning up on illegal download sites a good 24 hours before its official release. It’s a phenomenon that feels faintly old-fashioned. You might have thought the whole business of leaking albums belonged to a past era, before streaming supplanted downloads, and that people are now largely happy to adhere to the schedule knowing they’ll be able to stream the album for free when it arrives.

But apparently there are exceptions. Such is the power of a hit like Endless Summer Vacation’s lead single, Flowers. It’s hit No 1 everywhere from Poland to Paraguay, seven weeks and counting at the top of the British charts, its lyrics and video painstakingly scanned by a media and fanbase eager to discover references to Cyrus’s ex-husband Liam Hemsworth, three years after their divorce.

Or perhaps people are just eager to see what Miley Cyrus does next. Ever since she broke loose from her early persona as a squeaky-clean Disney star, her career seems to have been governed by two competing impulses. The first is to be a 21st-century pop star, making the kind of committee-written electronic hits that 21st-century pop stars tend to make, as was the case with her 2013 album Bangerz. The other is to be a more traditional or even leftfield artist, making records that highlight the Stevie Nicks-ish qualities of her voice: the Miley Cyrus who roared her way through a lockdown cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, who followed up Bangerz with the Flaming Lips collaboration Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, then followed that up with 2017’s country-rock flavoured Younger Now.

The public seems to have decided which Cyrus they prefer – trailed by a duet with Dua Lipa and the disco-flavoured Midnight Sky, her last album Plastic Hearts did substantially better than its two predecessors – but if Cyrus was that bothered about public opinion, she would never have shaken off her Disney shackles in quite such uncompromising style.

Channels

Categories

Tags

Forums Dancehall Reggae Endless Summer Vacation shows Miley Cyrus’ versatility, but it’s a step back