MILEY’s Bass Persuades; Let the Kids Dance

POP TINGZ RATING

7.8/10

We have known Miley Cyrus by a surprising number of names. Miley Ray Cyrus. Miley Stewart. Hannah Montana. Miley Cyrus. Now, apparently, just MILEY.

Dropping the surname could easily read as pop-star branding, but after nearly two decades of reinvention, it makes a peculiar amount of sense. Beyoncé, Cher, Adele, Madonna. Certain names eventually stop requiring clarification. And really, how many Mileys come to mind?

That small act of shedding turns out to be a useful way into Bass Persuades. This is an album made by an artist who no longer seems particularly interested in choosing which version of herself she is supposed to be. The rock singer of Plastic Hearts, the psychedelic eccentricity of Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, the California softness of Younger Now, the pop provocateur of Bangerz and even traces of the teenager many listeners grew up alongside all exist here at once. Instead of announcing another reinvention, MILEY folds the old ones together.

At just 10 tracks, Bass Persuades is unusually concise for a contemporary pop album, and that economy works in its favor. Produced largely by Kid Harpoon and Maxx Morando, it moves through pop, rock, electronics, shadowy club music, and stripped-back balladry without lingering anywhere long enough to become predictable. MILEY has described the title in terms of music's physical pull, the bass that makes you move as much as the feelings that move through you, and the record takes that idea surprisingly literally. These songs often communicate through texture before they reveal themselves through lyrics.

The title track makes the mission explicit. “Bass Persuades” urges the listener toward movement, but there is something almost philosophical buried under its physicality. “Go analogue” reads like a pointed rejection of artificiality in an era increasingly consumed by AI, while the familiar “can’t stop, won’t stop” feels like MILEY slyly quoting herself to us with a dance anthem pulsating in the backgorund.

From there the record quickly darkens. “Different Religion,” featuring Model/Actriz, is grimier and more sensual, wrapping grunge textures around the deliciously irreverent “I’ve got my own god / My god’s a hot boy.” When she sings, “I want to be saved by a different religion,” spirituality and lust collapse into the same desire. That dirtier edge makes the softness of “Let’s Get Married” feel almost startling by comparison. Slow drums, warm bass, and dreamy synths surround a simple question, “What did I do to deserve you?" and for once there is very little irony separating MILEY from the sentiment.

Love hangs over much of Bass Persuades, but not in the frantic, self-destructive way it once did in her music. MILEY sounds almost suspiciously content. The album does not necessarily tell a straightforward romantic story, yet there is an ease running through it, the sound of someone for whom life appears to be going rather well.

That feeling reaches its clearest expression on “Orbit,” perhaps the album's finest song. The production is remarkably spare, anchored by minimal piano and little else that demands attention, which leaves MILEY's voice completely exposed. “And we don’t have to touch / ’Cause close is close enough / I wanna orbit you” could have been buried beneath a towering power ballad arrangement. Instead, restraint gives the lyric its force. MILEY has always possessed one of pop's most immediately recognizable voices, but on Bass Persuades she sounds better than ever because she has stopped treating that voice like something that needs to be proven.

That restraint makes the record's sudden bursts of motion more satisfying. “Aftermath” begins slowly before snapping into pulsating electronic beats, turning the memory of “you were mine” into something closer to a club-floor flashback. “REDLIGHTS” pushes the contrast further. MILEY slips into a distinctly country-inflected delivery while rigid, almost robotic percussion collides with strings around her. It should sound mismatched. Instead, the friction becomes the song's identity, a useful reminder that genre has long been less interesting to MILEY than what happens when you force incompatible sounds into the same room.

“Neon Lights,” featuring Andrew Wyatt of Miike Snow, is stranger still. Their voices move together throughout the song over production that recalls the woozier experiments of Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz. It is intentionally a little misshapen, a welcome streak of weirdness on an album polished enough that it could otherwise become too comfortable. “Innocent Ways” finds a different kind of intimacy in family, its whirling beat carrying a song about being there for her sister after a difficult crisis. It gives Bass Persuades an emotional register beyond romance without disrupting the album's loose sense of warmth.

Even when the guitars become more prominent on “Snow,” the record never settles fully into the rock revival one might have expected after Plastic Hearts. That seems deliberate. MILEY could make another rock record convincingly, but Bass Persuades is more interested in treating rock as one color. Electric guitars can sit beside synthetic percussion; country phrasing can exist inside electronic production; a bare piano can carry as much weight as the bass promised by the title.

The only truly puzzling decision comes with “Bass Persuades Remixx,” essentially a more amplified, house-leaning version of the opening track. It is more danceable and pushes the original further toward the club, but on such a short record, dedicating one of only 10 slots to a remix feels odd. The song is enjoyable enough, yet the album might have benefited more from another original idea, particularly when everything surrounding it suggests MILEY had no shortage of directions available to explore.

More importantly, there is confidence in the singing. MILEY has never lacked vocal power, but power is not the most impressive thing about her performance here. It is control. Years of rasp, rock belting and pop precision have settled into a voice that can now communicate intensity without always reaching for volume. “Orbit” demonstrates it most clearly, but the quality runs through the whole record. She bends herself around these arrangements rather than forcing every arrangement to bend around her.

That may be why Bass Persuades feels less like another costume change than a consolidation. The Miley of Bangerz is here. So is the one behind Plastic Hearts. The romantic ease of Younger Now surfaces in places, while Dead Petz' appetite for the slightly bizarre has not disappeared either. For longtime listeners, there are moments that feel strangely like hearing several periods of your own life reflected back through hers.

Yet the album never gets stuck looking backward. Its greatest trick is making all those former Mileys sound like they were leading here.

For years, reinvention was one of Miley Cyrus' defining talents. Every era seemed to require some act of destruction before the next one could begin. Hair came off, genres disappeared, identities were discarded, and another Miley stepped forward.

MILEY sounds like she has finally grown tired of killing off the old versions.

On Bass Persuades, she keeps them all.