On November 27th, 2020, we were blessed with Miley Cyrus’ new pop-rock album Plastic Hearts, and I will say right now that the outcome was beyond impressive. After Miley Cyrus released her single “Midnight Sky” and performed “Heart of Glass” on the virtual iHeart Radio Festival, it was no surprise that Cyrus announced a rock-inspired album on Oct 23rd of last year. Frankly, Miley’s voice was made for rock, and this collection of tracks proves it!
The single “Midnight Sky” elaborately declared her breakup with former partner Liam Hemsworth after nearly a decade, shouting independence from her experiences and past “entanglement” with her ex. Many jaws dropped after Miley addressed the photos of her kissing Kaitlyn Carter back in Italy back in 2019 in this brand new single. “See my lips on her mouth, everybody’s talking now, baby/ Ooh, you know it’s true, yeah/ That I was born to run, I don’t belong to anyone, oh no/ I don’t need to be loved by you (loved by you).” What an insane mic drop for Miley, “Yup, the tabloids were correct, what about it?” The single’s energy resonated with “Can’t Be Tamed”–her ever iconic rebellious track from 2010 that really sealed her independence from Disney.
We cannot be surprised that Miley would be successful as a rock star. She’s lived the life, and she has the raspy-smoker voice to fit the sound perfectly. “WTF Do I Know?” is such a brilliant way to bust out of the gates for an album with a completely different sound than the child star version of Miley Cyrus that our generation has become accustomed to. It seems like most stars that gained their fame from early 2000’s Disney shows work hard to try and shed their “Disney-skin” that, when they were young teens, framed them as perfect, child-like people who must exist as a PG entity, which is just not true for pretty much any adolescent.
Miley has been attempting to shed those scales for the past decade, and Plastic Hearts opening with the f-bomb definitely does it. “Probably not gon’ wanna play me on your station…I’m completely naked but I’m making it fashion/Maybe getting married just to cause a distraction…What the f**k do I know? I’m alone/’Cause I couldn’t be somebody’s hero.” There’s references to her relationship with Hemsworth, her Bangerz (“Wrecking Ball”) era, and even her Disney days where she was contractually obligated to be a person for adolescents to look up to. I mean, truly, what do any of us actually know, much less a teenager that had been thrown into fame? It’s an anthem for a lot of us, and feels like a coherent word-vomit of all of her emotions that have built up over the years.
The title-track is all about the upset of using vices to try and feel something, “Keep me up all night/I just wanna feel”—the monotony of it all. It reveals Cyrus’ internal struggle and the spark that really “devolved” her life in the public eye since Bangerz in 2013. The dissonance in Miley’s professional and personal life appears in most of the songs on the album. “Prisoner (feat. Dua Lipa),” “Midnight Sky,” “Hate Me,” “High,” and “Never Be Me” depict the negatives in Cyrus’ prior relationship and also self-reflect on her individuality and peace with who she is. We also get some good sex songs from the “sex, drugs & rock n’ roll” saying like “Gimme What I Want,” “Night Crawling (feat. Billy Idol),” and “Bad Karma (feat. Joan Jett).” (Wow, what ridiculous features). The album as a whole ends on a gorgeous, lowkey ballad, “Golden G String.” Overall, it’s a really good album.
The only issue with the album in construction is the organization of the songs. There would be a few songs that were “party-bangers” that I would imagine being played at bars if it weren’t for COVID, and then immediately follow with a song that poured her entire heart out. It made me lose rhythm for the tone of the album when listening, which has caused me personally to skip some of the deeper ballads because they feel out of place. Nevertheless, the overall sound of the album is fairly harmonious; it definitely feels like the perfect sound of music for Miley—it feels like her soul, what she grew up with, and what she now wants to put out into the world.
