By Devin O’Neill
The following will be a review of the new
Miley Cyrus album Bangerz, and the
promotional and branding strategies surrounding the album’s release.
First we’ll discuss the music, since
that’s definitely the neglected part of the equation.
Miley’s come up with a new pop sound, and
it works. I love it. I’m going to have to rethink my approach to a lot of what’s
on the radio, to Top 40, because of what’s been done here. It makes a lot of
current pop sound dated. Recent Top 40’s been influenced heavily by 120-BPM
dance music. Big-tent electronica. Think Ke$ha, LMFAO, even the new Britney.
Miley’s drawn a line and departed from all that.
She and her team have accomplished this
by, basically, incorporating cutting-edge trends in hip-hop – trap, drill,
what-have-you – into her sound, alongside country and pop. The textures are
round and thick, not excessively massive or blown-out like a lot of the pop on
the radio. It’s got a great bottom end and tons of clarity, and reminds me of
soundscapes I’ve heard from Die Antwoord, Drake, even Dr. Dre.
She’s mixing and matching musical styles,
but her personality ties it all together into a vital brand. She can pose
herself as country, and pull off a hip-hop-hoedown with Nelly on “4x4”, the
only modern club banger I’ve ever heard with a straight-up cowgirl-line-dance
rhythm.
The whole album is like this. She uses
her raunchy southern-girl attitude to smooth the edges between raw hip-hop and
the other forms she’s playing with, while rocking her new look. The result is
very pop, very confrontational, and very her. One massive debutante fuck-you.
“Do My Thang” is an archetypal example of the sound, and probably my favorite
track on the album.
Her lyrics are raw, confrontational, and
naive, which, in the context of this sort of ratchet/cowgirl persona, works
perfectly. Think 2 Chainz yelling “SHE GOT A BIG BOOTY SO I CALL HER BIG
BOOTY”. Hard-skulled punk-hop. In fact the weakest moments, lyrically, are those
where Miley tries to over-rationalize or move outside her pure attitude.
Attitude is the fuel this album runs on. Attitude and romance.
Yeah, Miley’s 20, so a lot of these songs
are about love, sex, even marriage. They’re wide-eyed and openhearted, and,
combined with her determination to decide what her own moral boundaries are,
make for a compelling window into the fire of youth. It’s almost like she has
unlimited energy, and she sings with an enormous amount of confidence and
conviction.
The album art is straight out of Tumblr.
A collaged, retro explosion of ridiculousness, neon, palm trees, and lo-fi
digital. Anyone who hasn’t spent time in some pretty weird corners of the Internet
might be confused. Others will recognize the aesthetic immediately, especially
if they’re into performers like Geneva Jacuzzi. It’s all archival scuzz.
This singularity of identity, though,
isn’t restricted to the album. So now, we get to the rest of the equation. Now
we get to the secret plan.
