Miley Cyrus Finds Home on Plastic Hearts

One of pop’s most underrated chameleons steps into a genre she was made to perform

Miley Cyrus is an industry force of nature. The spotlight that was thrust upon her as a child star has never dimmed as the years passed, thanks mostly to both her natural-born talent and endless charisma that allows her every transformation to feel completely genuine. Though she’s experienced peaks and valleys like any other musician, she seems almost more adept than others at weaving through the stages in a way that seems effortless. And yet? Her every musical iteration still feels uniquely her. Cyrus’ commitment to her craft and aesthetics through the years has never come off as disingenuous, a grab for radio play, or a plea for relevance. She has always seemed completely content with doing exactly what she wants to do at the moment, opinions of others be damned. She made her thesis statement clear in a long-forgotten album cut from her first post-Hannah, grown-up album: “I’m not your robot.”

After Disney, pop, trap, hip-hop, lo-fi stoner electro, country/folk, and the amalgamation of it all that was 2019’s SHE IS COMING, we’ve now arrived at Miley the rockstar. She’s flirted with the genre before many times, but she’s never committed an entire album to the walloping studio guitars, riotous drums, and exasperatedly-emotive writing styles true to classic and post-classic modern rock. So it’s both a relief and no surprise at all to hit play on her latest effort, Plastic Hearts, and quickly realize that this may be the sound Miley Cyrus was born to create.

At times, it feels like each new song has enough personality to outshine the last. I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life but this album makes me want to run out and buy a pack. Cyrus’ natural rasp hits full grit on Plastic Hearts, her vocals like a gravel road threatening to betray the beaten-down wheels of old Cadillac vying to win its last drag race. On lovelorn ballads like “Angels Like You,” Cyrus channels the great goddesses of rock’s past like she was there to see them live. A student of music her whole life, she knows the emotion lies in the vocals of a big song like this. She’s always known how to manufacture genuine emotion through her voice with any genre she’s tried her hand at, but she’s never sounded quite this committed. Her fragility hangs on every note, and Cyrus has enough of it to sell out entire arenas.

On “Prisoner,” Miley teams up with Dua Lipa to lament the feelings they hold for old exes over a beat that nearly interpolates a bit of Olivia Newton John’s “Physical.” It’s a factory-made earworm, but for a collaboration with Dua Lipa, who has locked one of 2020’s best albums under her belt, the song is underwhelming. It works best in its context within the album, but it still seems like one of the record’s weaker spots. It never quite captures the spark of the songs that precede it— especially when compared to the two tracks that follow. If “Prisoner” is our amuse-bouche then “Gimme What I Want” is our full course meal, with “Night Crawling” the most sinfully delectable, terrifyingly rich dessert you’ve ever tasted. On the former, we’re thrust into a song that will undoubtedly require concert venues to reinforce the stands whenever it’s safe for Cyrus to tour the album. A stripped-down guitar curls over itself while a blasting bassline touts Miley’s pleas to be satiated. “I don’t need afuture, I don’t need your past/I just need a lover/So gimme what I want or I’ll give it to myself,” she howls in the chorus. It’s a writhing masterpiece that sounds like if a ripped fishnet was pressed onto wax.

“Night Crawling,” which features punk-rock legend Billy Idol, is undoubtedly one of the finest songs Cyrus has released in her already illustrious career. It’s a pure 1980s horror-thriller masterpiece, like The Lost Boys on speed. Cyrus and Idol answer the call of the devil for a relentless rock anthem that’s already destined to be a future Halloween classic, which the world desperately needs more of. It’s nearly impossible not to hit repeat the moment it comes to an exhilarating close. It is, without a doubt, Plastic Heart’s most cinematic moment.

After the coda of the still-fantastic “Midnight Sky,” Miley gives her vocal cords some much-needed respite. “High” and “Hate Me” are both interesting, introspective tracks that ruminate on Cyrus’ styles of loving and living, but they certainly feel uniquely placed within the album to be a comedown compared to what we’ve heard to far. “Bad Karma,” a song that was initially teased over a year and a half ago, finally sees the light of day with accompaniment from the legendary former Runaway Joan Jett. Jett’s style works perfectly alongside Cyrus’, and when Miley lets Joan have her time to shine on the song it feels not only appropriate but like a moment of true admiration. The song’s moaning “oh OH oh!” vocal bassline grows tiring by the end, but not enough to stop the party.

But has there ever been a rock album where every song sounds equally huge? Somewhere along the way, artists will almost surely try to break away just enough from the sounds that fill the rest of the record. The album’s title track is exactly that. The bold, excellent opener of “WTF Do I Know?” leaves us full of adrenaline while the opening hand drums of “Plastic Hearts” sound exactly like a sound preset loop you might find on Garageband, stranded in the background of thousands of YouTube videos that no one has clicked on. Luckily, that isn’t to say the rest of the track is bad. Once the BPM picks up a bit, Miley lays into the vocal, pleading “I just want to feel something,” before a raucous electric guitar solo leads her into the final chorus. It all works in the end but ultimately doesn’t make itself a standout. And that’s fine too — rock fans relish the opportunity to wear albums out, memorizing every lyric and melody until even the less-thrilling spots sound like classic songs.

“Never Be Me” is Cyrus’ cautionary tale toward anyone who may come into her life thinking she’ll be anything other than a wanderer. The song’s verse and chorus structure find her personalities warring — the rolling stone and the committed partner. “If you’re looking for stable, that’ll never be me/but I hope that I’m able to be all that you need.” Cyrus’ love life has been well documented for as long as she’s been in the spotlight, and the whole world knows of her on-off-on-off romance with ex-fiancé Liam Hemsworth. It’s hard to tell which songs on Plastic Hearts may be about him specifically or about some other entity altogether, a general romantic presence being lamented by a woman who is constantly discovering a new side of herself.

The album closes with “Golden G-String,” perhaps an answer to “Never Be Me,” where Miley chooses to stay with a partner, at least for now. Cyrus’ nomadic nature — between musical genres, career moves, haircuts, etc. — is what has kept her so successful all these years. Her 2007 album Hannah Montana: Meet Miley Cyrus was misleading. Back then we weren’t meeting Miley, but just her first iteration; Volume 1 to the public, surely Volume 100-something to her. Cyrus has never been afraid to live wholly in her chameleonic self, something she’s often been criticized for when abandoning projects and sounds after she deems their eras complete. But that’s what makes her so damn fascinating — you never know which Miley is going to come through your speakers when you hit shuffle. But if there's one thing that can be certain, it’s that Plastic Hearts finally solidifies something Miley and her fans have known for years: she’s a bonafide rockstar. Born to run and doesn’t belong to anyone.