Miley Cyrus finally released her ninth studio album! After winning her first Grammy with the song “Flowers”, Miley was dropping some hints on what was coming afterwards, and it was worth waiting. Mentioned for the first time in November 2024, Something Beautiful is her first visual album. The 13 tracks that compose it, including a prelude and two interludes, came to music platforms as possibly the best album of her career.
Mixing experimental music, ballad, a bit of psychedelic rock and pop, referencing The Wall from Pink Floyd, Miley also showed up with big participations, as Brittany Howard and Naomi Campbell, and a lot of nostalgia from the golden era of pop.
A new era
Since her Disney era, the artist has shown that she is very authentic and is not afraid of changes, proving always that she is a versatile singer with excellent tunes and deep lines. Miley, in her interview for “The Interview Podcast”, talked about how she wanted to reclaim and reimagine the word “beautiful” and what it means to her with this album. She explores the depths of human feelings, not just the traditionally pretty ones, but all the types of feelings that are not socially considered beautiful.
“When I think about being born, the first person that I saw was my grandma, my mom was adopted, so being able to be put into her arms[…] it’s way before me. When I think about these moments in my life, being handed to her when I was first born, and when she passed away, both of those moments were so beautiful to me. One of them is really joyous and one of them is really painful, but they are equally beautiful[…] That’s why I made this album to reclaim what beauty is and what it means to me. Because I think birth is beautiful, death is beautiful […] Rage or hatefulness, we were taught that there is no beauty in it, but it lets us know that we are alive”
And that way of thinking has built Something Beautiful, an album filled with love, passion, grief, rage, and everything that makes us human beings. Cyrus explores her emotions through the soundtrack, focusing on the experience. She doesn’t just make good music, but rather good music that makes people think.
the album’s star
The best example of a song dedicated to love and everything that makes us humans is “End of the World”. This powerful track was released before the album. With visuals that evoke an 80s vibe, golden lights, and an amazing original custom Mugler piece by Casey Cadwallader, the singer seamlessly blends music, film, fashion, and emotion through a four-minute and 12-second video clip. This song sounds like an old classic, but with her special touch of youthfulness and love for her mother.
Besides that, she also revealed in the “The Interview Podcast” that the entire first line of her song was taken from a phone call with her mother, in a moment that they had to be apart for one week, when Miley couldn’t go with her on vacation to Italy. During that vacation, she called Miley and said, “I don’t know why, but I just want to cry today. I’m looking at my window, and there’s nothing out there for me because you are back home”.
And, from this super close relationship with her mother, the phrase “Today, you woke up, and you told me that you wanted to cry” opened the most dancing and emotional song (in my vision) of this album. She continues deeper in her feelings with “you’ve been thinking about the future like it’s already yours”, expressing her fear of the future without her mother.
These lyrics talk essentially about remembering that, even if you try to control everything in you life (like money that you save to buy a Mercedes Benz, as Cyrus references in her own song), the future is uncertain, and you have nothing to do about it, but enjoy the ride. She embraces the idea of non-control with a different perspective that we normally do in our anxious hearts, with a bittersweet glittery pop acceptance.
She sings about accepting ourselves without fear and especially about showing our love when we have the opportunity to do it. When she says: “Hold me close, you know tomorrow isn’t coming for sure / Let’s pretend that it’s not the end of the world”, she is remembering that we never know when it’s actually our last time to say “I love you” to somebody, but we always have now, so it’s not over yet.
The Something Beautiful era, as well as its main star, “End of the World”, has bittersweet lyrics, along with happy tunes to make it last in your soul painfully. For me, that is Miley’s most remarkable skill: transforming anxious feelings into beautiful things.
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The article above was edited by Isabelle Bignardi.
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