Miley Cyrus – ‘Something Beautiful’ review: the post-genre popstar pulls off another big swing

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Miley Cyrus, photo by Glen Luchford

It’s become de rigueur to call Miley Cyrus a “shapeshifter” or “musical chameleon”, and with good reason. Over the course of eight albums, she’s pivoted from provocative R&B (2013’s ‘Bangerz’) to Flaming Lips-assisted psychedelia (2015’s ‘Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz’), and from spiky ’80s rock (2020’s ‘Plastic Hearts’) to sparkling California dance-pop (2023’s ‘Endless Summer Vacation’).

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But at this point in her career, it’s probably more accurate to view Cyrus as a post-genre pop star. She records what she wants, when she wants, because she knows she’s got the chops to pull it off. Her distinctive voice, which once sounded remarkably raspy for a Disney Channel star, now just sounds like a formidable instrument. Seemingly, she can sing anything.

‘Something Beautiful’, her ninth studio album, comes accompanied by a musical film that Cyrus says is her “way of touring” without having hit the road. Aside from a couple of instrumental interludes that will probably make more sense with visuals – the film premieres on June 6, a week after the album drops – ‘Something Beautiful’ works beautifully as a standalone record.

Working with a palette of collaborators including rock producer Shawn Everett, Jonathan Rado of indie duo Foxygen and punk drummer Maxx Morando, who’s also her romantic partner, Cyrus has made an album that feels cinematic without slipping into sub-Bond theme cliché. If Fleetwood Mac had written a song for an ’80s blockbuster movie, it might have sounded like ‘Golden Burning Sun’.

Lead single ‘End of the World’ may have performed modestly on the charts, but its drivetime glide sounds classic enough to house a Beatles-referencing lyric. When Cyrus offers to “throw a party like McCartney with some help from our friends”, it’s cheesy in a charming way. Elsewhere, she puts idiosyncratic new spins on sounds she’s previously tried on for size. ‘Walk of Fame’, a disco-rock stomper that features Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard, sounds like a ‘Plastic Hearts’ banger with added dashes of Lady Gaga and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

The similarly ’80s-influenced ‘Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved’ climaxes with Naomi Campbell telling us to “pose, pose, pose!” over kinetic, Pet Shop Boys-esque beats. It’s precisely as high camp as that sounds. And ‘Easy Lover’, which Cyrus says she wrote with Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ album in mind, recalls her country-flecked 2017 LP ‘Younger Now’.

Featuring 13 tracks that unfurl over 53 minutes, ‘Something Beautiful’ is sprawling and apparently unperturbed by contemporary chart trends. It’s difficult to think of a Spotify playlist that might accommodate ‘Reborn’, which sounds a bit like an Andrew Lloyd Webber show tune written on mild hallucinogens. So while ‘Something Beautiful’ probably isn’t Cyrus’s most hit-packed album, it does feel like a fully realised artistic statement. This post-genre pop star has pulled off another pretty big swing.