Miley Cyrus - Bass Persuades

“Every star in every sky is shining on demand”. We demand, and Miley is shining when she chooses to.

Miley Cyrus, who is now simply Miley, has presented her tenth studio album and her first after the big move to Atlantic / Warner Records. She continues to grow older and settle down alongside her music, choosing love, passion, desire, and stability as the themes of her new record.

I perfectly understand that not everyone, like me, can say they have lived with Miley Cyrus for most of their life. She is a couple of years older than me, and our process of growing up and some kind of evolution happened in a very natural parallel. In a way, Miley was my life spoiler, showing me what to expect in the next few years of my own life: the desire to change, to be crazy, to prove something to someone, to become calmer, to value yourself and the people around you. But at the same time, I understand that for many people from the outside, this kind of musical reflection of growing up and going through different phases makes an artist seem unstable and confusing. Because Miley is a chameleon, Miley is a woman of the moment. On one hand, this makes her an absolute virtuoso who has tried so many things in her life that many artists would not try in an entire career. On the other hand, it has always pushed her away from a mass audience because people simply never knew where they stood with her. 

It seemed like the first notes of that stability appeared on Endless Summer Vacation and continued on her personal masterpiece, Something Beautiful. Even though it commercially flopped, creatively it became an absolute career high for Miley in my eyes.

And now comes her next stage: Bass Persuades, on which she promises us experiments, a more timely story about her life, since the album was literally created within a year, and love stories. Did she keep her promise? Well, partially. But we are talking about Miley Cyrus. Living up to expectations has never really been her thing.

By its very nature, Bass Persuades is an album of contrasts, and what you definitely do not expect from its visuals and presentation is that exactly half of the album consists of ballads or mid-tempo songs about love. So let’s look at it through these two sides that divide it.

The slower part of the album include “Let’s Get Married”, which is a very beautiful, cute, very wedding-like song. There is “Orbit”, with very good lyrics and great delivery, generally giving off a little bit of the vibe of her Can’t Be Tamed album. There is “REDLIGHTS” (definitely not a ballad, but a mid-tempo dance song) with its retro sexual-lust vibes and some timeless Jessie Ware-style energy. There is “Neon Signs”, which is very sexy, with an unusual and, in places, strange mix, funny moans and breaths, but an incredible combination in the duet with Andrew Wyatt. And there is “Snow”, which quite interestingly plays with its instrumentation, but does it safely sonically. In general, Miley Cyrus’s ballads are a pretty stable thing. She does them well, they work, but they don’t always amuse you.

The more experimental and energetic side of the album includes the lead single “Bass Persuades”, which I have already discussed in a separate review. There is “Different Religion”, which is definitely a highlight not only of this album but of Miley Cyrus’s discography, with its dark, industrial rock and absolutely stunning instrumental. The vocal addition from Model/Actriz might be a shock for unprepared listeners, but it works. Their voices together sound incredible. It is a slutty gay dark club banger for some sensual dancing with a magnificent hook. Then there is “Aftermath”, which probably cannot be called experimental, but it is more high-energy, with a pretty strange and interesting rhythm that builds up very well throughout the song and gives off something of a Bangerz vibe. There is also “Innocent Ways”, another one of the coolest highlights on this album. It is very grungy and very fitting for the visuals and the title of the album.

The odd one out is “Bass Persuades Remixx” and I cannot say that I understand why it needs to be on this album. In general, as someone who does not respect remixes that much except for some exceptional moments, I do not really want to put it into either of these categories.

Ultimately, Bass Persuades is sonically and from its standpoint quite close to Endless Summer Vacation. What separates the two is the fact that the more experimental moments on Bass Persuades actually work, unlike some of what happened on Endless Summer Vacation. If I compare it to Miley’s previous work, Something Beautiful, I would say that this record is less slay and more love.

There is not a single bad song on this album. But there are also fewer peaks than I probably would have wanted. Miley still does not commit to a certain genre and give us a fully experimental industrial/electronic album, instead splitting it almost equally between safer songs that are more accessible to the average listener. Because of that, the album possibly feels less sonically focused than Something Beautiful, which was an absolute banger from the first song to the last one, with a very cohesive story and grand sounds and performances.

Here, we get a pretty tightly put-together album that works very well as a whole. Up-tempo, mid-tempo, and ballad songs are mixed together, creating a rather unique and pleasant-to-the-ear mix. What I personally missed on this album is probably a commitment to the idea. Because, knowing Miley, she is an artistic extremist, someone who is ready for an album to not be massive, as long as it is exactly what she wanted it to be.

At the same time, this album grows quite organically alongside Miley and her rather private but, at the moment, quite happy and stable life. You can read that in the lyrics, and you can read it in her performances. In places, the lyrics really become more mature, more conscious, and more interesting. And that musical diversity gives you a reason to keep listening, because at every turn you are not completely sure what else Miley is going to surprise you with. And she absolutely has some aces up her sleeve on this album.

In the end, Bass Persuades turned out to be an interesting, angular, uneven, sometimes provocative and sometimes closed-off album. I mentioned in my Something Beautiful review that it felt like the real starting point rather than a finish line, and here with Bass Persuades, it's yet again not a final destination, but rather another little corner in the winding and unique experience Miley has been offering her listeners for 20 years now.

7.5/10

Thanks to Warner Music for the early listen!