She’s Just Being Miley: Seven Takeaways From ‘Bass Persuades’

A new Miley Cyrus album is always an event. Ten albums into an ever-changing career in pop, she’s shown she can surprise us, delight us, make a huge hit, or make something weird — and you never quite know which Miley you’re going to get. That’s part of the fun. She’s said she worked quickly when she was recording her latest album, Bass Persuades , which arrives slightly less than 18 months after 2025’s Something Beautiful . So what’s it like? Here are our first reactions after taking a spin through these 10 adventurous tracks.

Miley has been doing this for long enough to know what kind of lead single will get an album off the ground. “Flowers” got so big it eclipsed the rest of Endless Summer Vacation (a fair trade for her first Grammy win). But “Bass Persuades,” the opening and title track of her latest LP, hit reset in a more misleading way. The track is built around the defeated sentiment that “the kids don’t wanna dance” — rich coming from an artist who avoids the stage like a plague despite being one of the most charismatic performers we have. “Bass Persuades” diminished a lot of faith in the record for some fans, but don’t be fooled. Bass Persuades is so much sharper than its lead single let on. —Larisha Paul

For so many of us Miley fans, one of her peaks is her 2015 space-rock opus Miley Cyrus & her Dead Petz , where she got heavily into the prog side of her artistry. It’s an album unlike anything else in her catalog: She teamed up with Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips to float off into her own corner of the galaxy, as she mourned her late dog Floyd and her late blowfish Pablo in lava-lamp headphone classics like “Something About Space Dude.” She hits these heights again in “Orbit,” floating over the Pink Floyd-style synths for a psychedelic prayer to orbit you forever. Despite the Dead Petz ambience, she swerves back into a down-home country twang to sing this one, which somehow makes it trippier. Somewhere in the cosmos, Aunt Dolly is damn proud. — Rob Sheffield Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

A reading from the Book of Miley, who has a lot to say about her latest divine revelations in the album highlight “Different Religion.” This fantastic 2002-vintage electroclash bombshell opens like Black Sabbath circa “Iron Man” swerving into Duran Duran circa “The Wild Boys,” with the electro-distortion going into the red until everything sounds like broken glass. Miley proclaims the gospel of some groovy theology, proclaiming “I’ve got my own god! He drives a fast car!” and “My god’s a hot boy!” Model/Actriz join in, with awesomely butch robot commands over the industrial beats. By the end, she’s chanting, “Losing our innocence/Give in to sin again/Take it to Genesis/We’re gonna begin again.” It’s a new religion where God is basically the same thing as having sex with a squadron of tanks while it grinds you into the dust. Let us pray.