It's Miley, bitch.
Two days ago Miley Cyrus dropped her last name on socials and announced her new album Bass Persuades, her first for Atlantic Records. Tonight she shared the music video for the title track. It's a club-oriented pop song that feels very much in continuum with Madonna and Britney Spears. The way she says "Let's go" at the beginning especially reminds me of Blackout-era Britney, to say nothing of the minimal synth-powered beat. Yet there's a British new wave quality to her Sprechgesang vocals and those synth textures, as if she's pulling from the lineage of Pet Shop Boys, Soft Cell, and New Order. And when the chorus hits and the beat achieves liftoff, her vocal is pure Madge, even as the melody connects back to past Miley hooks.
"Bass Persuades" is about how young people today are in such a sad state that they don't even party anymore. "The kids don't wanna dance," Cyrus repeats on the chorus. "We can't stay like this forever/ Let's surrender to the night, put our bodies close together." She also laments during the first verse, "Candy's cut with fentanyl that nobody wants." And the second verse offers this throwback: "Glued your eyes to the telephone screen/ But you missed the hit without MTV."
For the past decade or so, Cyrus' catalog has bounced between bids for mainstream pop ubiquity and artier, more alt-leaning projects. She followed the rocking Plastic Hearts with Endless Summer Vacation, which yielded the inescapable Grammy-winning hit "Flowers." Then she came back with Something Beautiful, a more alt-leaning effort brimming with contributions from indie musicians. she's clearly back in world-domination mode. I'm not sure this song is the answer, but let's see if it works.
(For what it's worth, the last two times she switched labels, it led to her two #1 hits, "Wrecking Ball" from her RCA debut Bangerz and "Flowers" from her Columbia debut Endless Summer Vacation. This lady sure does change labels a lot.)
Watch Mert Alas' "Bass Persuades" video below.
Bass Persuades is out 9/18 on Atlantic.
