{"id":621587,"date":"2026-09-20T03:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T03:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/621587\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T03:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T03:50:15","slug":"mileys-bass-persuades-is-pretty-passable-and-light-on-bangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/621587\/","title":{"rendered":"Miley’s ‘Bass Persuades’ Is Pretty, Passable and Light on Bangers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe title track and first single from Miley Cyrus<\/a>\u2018 \u201cBass Persuades<\/a>\u201d was a classic act of misdirection, we now learn. Released two and a half weeks prior to the album, the song promised a tenth album full of bangers (with an S or Z, take your pick), mildly scolding the young people for not being interested enough in the dance floor \u2014 whatsa matter with kids today? \u2014 and aiming to redirect them there with a combination of throbbing rhythms and spoken-word instructions loosely borrowed from the catalogs of Madonna and Lady Gaga. For better or worse, it seemed as if Cyrus was going to drop some of her stylistic eccentricities, along with her last name, and deliver a pure club record.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut that was our supposition, not hers, even if borrowing the single\u2019s title for the whole project did seem to make a promise the full record isn\u2019t prepared to deliver on. The new album, which came out Friday sans press previews, opens with \u201cBass Persuades\u201d being followed by a second number in a faintly similar vein, \u201cDifferent Religion,\u201d but then it rarely returns to that territory until the 38-minute collection wraps up with its 10th track, a revved-up and unnecessary remix of the title track. What comes in between includes a surprising number of love ballads and a few odd outliers. It\u2019s eclectic, but not \u201cEndless Summer Vacation\u201d-level eclectic. One thing no one will ever remember about it is the album having a surfeit of bass.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo how about persuasion? It\u2019s a little light on that, too \u2014 pleasant, passable and occasionally compelling, but slight, with hooks that never quite reach the peaks you hope for out of a great pop song, and a bit of an \u201cis that all there is?\u201d feeling at the end of its relatively short length. It will be no one\u2019s favorite Miley album, nor anyone\u2019s least favorite. The overall feel is of something enjoyable on its own terms but a little undercooked in almost every regard, as if the star had been in a rush to deliver product to her new label, even as its primarily lovestruck lyrics \u2014 some of which are quite good \u2014 surely do reflect where the singer is at in her off-screen life. But for those who admired her previous album, the barely year-old \u201cSomething Beautiful,\u201d for finding a cool and interesting retro aesthetic and pretty much sticking with it, \u201cBass Persuades\u201d seems kind of centerless, more like an in-between project meant to mark time between bolder musical statements than any kind of arrival.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe core message of the album seems to be that things are going pretty well \u2014 make that extremely well \u2014 with fianc\u00e9e Maxx Morando, who is a writer-producer collaborator on all but two of the tracks. Hearing Miley in a besotted state turns up mixed results. The third track, \u201cLet\u2019s Get Married,\u201d is an abrupt left turn from the two bang-ier numbers that precede it into synthy easy listening\/AC flavors, and what it delivers is not worth the whiplash; while it will probably be heard at some weddings to come, there may be a lot of attendees who would be itchy to please skip ahead to the vows.<\/p>\n

\n\tFortunately, that syrupy aside is a low point from which the album fairly quickly recovers. \u201cOrbit,\u201d next up, is just as romantic but one of the collection\u2019s better tracks, as a power ballad \u2014 or even just ballad, without so much emphasis on the power \u2014 that applies some clever turns of phrase and thought to what could be a tired metaphor. Her significant other is the center of her solar system: \u201cPlace a marble on the floor \/ When you walk in the room, it\u2019ll roll to you\u201d is an image that makes for a lovely mash note.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe romantic reveries sometimes give way to things sillier and saucier. \u201cNeon Signs\u201d isn\u2019t a particularly memorable tune unto itself, but the increasingly ridiculous spoken interactions between Cyrus and duet partner Andrew Wyatt may put a smile on your face before all is cooed and done. And\/or make you cringe, since, as Wyatt murmurs at the end between the pair\u2019s sexy bedroom oohs and aahs, \u201cSome people think I\u2019m creepy, but others think I\u2019m just right.\u201d An album this immersed in relatively straightforward love songs could use this moment of awkward verbal snogging.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe album\u2019s best song, \u201cAftermath,\u201d arrives halfway through, and as the one track that really accelerates into something more impassioned, it would have made an ideal climax for the record, if not for one problem: it\u2019s the only sad song on the album, and thus would be a strange way to wrap up an otherwise cheerful collection. Still, it\u2019s good to know that Miley can take a philosophical moment to ponder The End of All Things \u2014 including, inherently, her relationship \u2014 as a sort of intermission in an album that\u2019s otherwise characterized by romantic buoyancy.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is one other dark track on the album, sure to be its most talked-about number \u2014 \u201cInnocent Ways,\u201d which has Cyrus singing at length about a sibling, which many listeners will presume to be Noah. \u201cI want better for my sister \/ She calls me only when it\u2019s late night and she\u2019s high \/ Her mind is spinning \/ Eight nights in a row \/ She\u2019s been in a crisis \/ She looks just like me when she cries.\u201d There needs to be some form of crisis to offer some dramatic tension in an album that doesn\u2019t have much, so if she has to borrow the angst from a family member, fair enough. Amusingly, Miley seems to resent her sister for wearing a Blondie T-shirt without actually listening to Blondie music. More intriguingly, she sings, \u201cFall out from the fame \/ Claim my mother\u2019s maiden name,\u201d suggesting that this is a family that thinks a lot about last names and how to claim or ditch them. Besides just being legitimately lyrically fascinating, \u201cInnocent Ways\u201d is also the album\u2019s most heated banger \u2014 and working out deep-rooted sibling issues over the din of the club is a concept we can get behind.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSnow\u201d ends the album on a sweeter, if relatively inconsequential-feeling, note, and ought to be the record\u2019s closer, but then Miley evidently thought nine is not enough and makes it an even 10 with the remix of the title track no one asked for. Ending with the most obvious form of filler is not the best look, although, as a non-fan of the original track, I could personally appreciate the amphetamine version of the number a little more.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaybe the album seems so short because Miley has booked Hollywood Bowl shows themed around it, and those will be awfully short performances if she sticks primarily to these nine numbers, which presumably she won\u2019t. It doesn\u2019t feel like \u201cBass Persuades\u201d is going to be an Event Album for Cyrus fans; her followers are notorious for finding her records polarizing, to the extent that an album like \u201cSomething Beautiful\u201d earns comments calling it either one of her best or one of her weakest \u2014 and yet it wouldn\u2019t be surprising if the fan base is unanimous in finding this new one belongs somewhere in the mid-section of any ranking. \u201cNot bad\u201d is probably not the reaction being sought when someone starts afresh in a business part of their career. But say this for her: she\u2019s someone who never makes the same album twice. So if this one is neither overwhelming nor underwhelming but just kind of whelming, it won\u2019t diminish the appetite for what mode she\u2019ll be in come Miley Mach 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The title track and first single from Miley Cyrus\u2018 \u201cBass Persuades\u201d was a classic act of misdirection, we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[272617,146,85,46,20155,409],"class_list":["post-621587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-bass-persuades","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-miley-cyrus","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}