(Columbia)The singer’s ninth album has grand ambitions but – despite some sparkling songcraft – falls short of its mind-altering promises and the hits that made her a starMiley Cyrus has made some very grand claims for her ninth album. Something Beautiful is not merely a concept album, but one the 32-year-old pop star has described as “an attempt to medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music”. One filled with “healing sound properties” designed to “impact frequencies in your body that make you vibrate at a different level”. And it’s not just all of that, but an accompanying film as well: a “one-of-a-kind pop opera” apparently inspired by Alan Parker’s 1982 film adaptation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall “but with a better wardrobe and more glamorous”.For all that the executives at Cyrus’s label are unlikely to say no to a huge star whose last album featured the world’s biggest-selling single of 2023 – Flowers, 2.7bn streams – you can still imagine them swallowing very hard when presented with all this. After all, Cyrus has form when it comes to going wildly off-piste: Bangerz, her biggest-selling album, was followed with Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, a sprawling collection of stoned jokes, musical non-sequiturs and psychedelic collaborations with the Flaming Lips. Furthermore, when her record label suggested that an hour and a half of this might try her fans’ patience, Cyrus’s response was to make Petz even longer, by including a recording of her playing Tibetan singing bowls. Continue reading… The Guardian Read More
