The day before Miley Cyrus released her new album, Bass Persuades, she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that life on the road poses too much of a threat to her sobriety, which is heavily reliant on consistent routines and familiarity. Rather than risk it,
she’d prefer to stay in one place and have her audience come to her, like the two Hollywood Bowl shows she has coming up. “This is perfect because people like to see me perform and I like to sleep in my marshmallow bed,” Cyrus said. “We can both be happy.” Well, kind of, but not quite.
While fans were dramatizing and dissecting her sentiment that “people will come to me,” there was another part of the interview they overlooked. It might not have seemed all that significant in its original context, but it’s a small detail that feels crucial to understanding Bass Persuades and the artist who made it.
At one point, Cyrus is reflecting on grief, anxiety, and a near-death experience in 2022 — and then she mentions a particular memory of performing her song “Fly on the Wall” for 250,000 people. “I started getting existential of how small I am and how I started thinking about time,” she said. “And this is all while I’m performing ‘Fly on the Wall.’” She joked about not wanting to kill the vibe with her existentialism during the early cuts the crowd came to hear. Cyrus performed a lot of these old, buzzy songs during that 2022 set. They significantly outnumbered the songs selected from her recent album at the time, Plastic Hearts, which remains her strongest record.
Cyrus isn’t on the stage much and hasn’t been in any consistent way in a long time. When she does perform, a greatest-hits format works well for her as a way to counteract the scarcity. But it doesn’t seem sustainable. Listening to Bass Persuades, it’s hard to understand how she can grow under those circumstances.
People will travel to hear “See You Again” and “We Can’t Stop.” But at 33, Cyrus couldn’t be further removed from who she was when she made those songs. When she tries to re-access some version of what fueled their creation, she ends up with “Bass Persuades,” a rambling lead single with little to say. She reiterates 19 times that “the kids don’t wanna dance.” Her voice, usually an attention-demanding force, is detached from the throbbing production. Cyrus closes the album with an industrial “Bass Persuades” remix from the noise rock band Model/Actriz, which only pushes her further into the background. Thankfully, most of the eight songs sandwiched between these two make more of an effort to connect.
Bass Persuades isn’t interested in dancing so much as it is invested fully in devotion. Cyrus couldn’t care less about what the kids are doing. She wants to talk about her guy. Model/Actriz join Cyrus once more on “Different Religion,” a gothic pop song about a man who drives a fast car and makes loud noise. “I’ve got my own god,” Cyrus sings. “My god’s a hot boy.” If her love is anything like the battering sound of the track, it must be intense, even if its lyrics betray the feeling. Elsewhere, Cyrus has an easier time finding the words when she serenades her muse, rather than trying to tell us about him.
“I would bend all space and time to fall into your hands,” Cyrus sings on the aching piano ballad “Orbit.” The starry-eyed standout has no use for flash and spectacle, much like the singer herself these days. There’s a sweet simplicity in how she races down the aisle on “Let’s Get Married.” As far as the canon of Cyrus’ love songs goes, it’s an instant classic. She sweetens the story with a glimpse into how she got there in the first place on “Snow.” “Now your knee’s in the dirt as I hold out my left,” she sings. “You should swallow the nerves ’cause there’s yes on my breath.”
The pairs of songs are especially wholesome and earnest coming from an artist who’s been through a divorce and, in the past, couldn’t resist telling two infatuated fans, “I hope your marriage goes better than mine. Mine was a fucking disaster.” Cyrus doesn’t shy away from destruction. She’s found some gems in the wreckage and rubble before. This time, she pulled “Aftermath” from it. “Do you ever fall into pieces? Do you ever think of me now and then?” she asks. “Don’t avoid the question.” When she isn’t excavating the past, the only true source of Cyrus’ heartbreak on this otherwise totally infatuated album is her sister, seemingly the subject of “Innocent Ways.”
“I want better for my sister/She calls me only when it’s late night and she’s high,” Cyrus sings in the opening verse. The sobering revelation contrasts with the full throttle warble of its bass. “I wonder if she went and changed her number/I tried to call her three times over/Is she alright? It keeps on ringing.” Cyrus has lived a lot of life in her 33 years. She wants to be a compass, but she’s still finding her way forward. She’s come to know fear and anxiety well without letting them close enough to control her. They trickle in a little on “REDLIGHTS,” a string-backed, euphoric synth-pop cut. “Truth is all we need, and also what I fear,” Cyrus sings. The track seems like the clearest, most successful showcase of what Bass Persuades aimed to accomplish both in sound and subject.
Contentment. That’s what Cyrus has been reaching for all this time. She holds onto it as a means of resisting an endless search for an elusive more. The album doesn’t create a sense that Cyrus is striving for some kind of mainstream breakthrough, likeEndless Summer Vacation, or even whatever artistic statement she tried to make on Something Beautiful. Her legacy is already clear: We’ve entered the Hannah Montana generation of pop stars and one of the biggest songs in the world at the moment, Adéla’s “Ain’t in LA,” was born from the inspiration of Bangerz.
The fickle pop public Cyrus once wanted to appease no longer seems to no longer have any leverage over her. Through the thundering sound of Bass Persuades, she can’t hear their defiant rebuttals to the notion that her audience will go where she goes. They aren’t what motivates her — especially not in the way the love she goes home to at the end of the night does.
When she reaches the chorus on “REDLIGHTS,” Cyrus delivers her vow to always choose to live in truth. “So when I’m summoned to the sky/I won’t fear anything, even enjoy that last goodbye/’Cause I have something to believe in,” she sings. “And baby, you’re the reason/I’ll turn my face up toward the light/Surrender lovingly and disappear into the night.”
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