Pop

While Something Beautiful offers high-energy glam rock alongside sultry pop songs, “More to Lose” stands out as the sole ballad – and as anyone knows, Cyrus’ ballads never miss. Much like “The Climb” or “Angels Like You,” her vocal prowess and poignant songwriting fuse for this devastating song about a relationship coming to its end. “I knew someday you’d do what I couldn’t do,” she sings. Yet, it’s the pre-chorus that’s become the most sticky, when she declares with a touch of knowing frustration: “You’re looking like a movie star in a worn-out coat, so I throw away my pride. It happens all the time.” There’s a laughable relatability to the line, in which a superstar in her own right can be just as easily swayed as anyone else – proving the power, and cost, of love. But even still, to her entire point, how beautiful to have loved and lost at all.

For those who have been following along, Cyrus wrote “End of the World” for her mom, Tish. It’s also one of the songs that shapeshifted as she workshopped the album through private shows for friends and family at Chateau Marmont. But in its current form, “End of the World” is a soaring anthem that invites everyone to sing along on the chorus of “oh ooh, oh ooh.” For a song that asks its listener to pretend like it’s not the end of the world, Cyrus succeeds in offering a distraction – and even if it only lasts about four minutes, the message is eternal.

Falling into the category of sultry pop song, “Easy Lover” would sound right at home in a dim, hazy jazz club. Despite being separated by the brief “Aggro” interlude, it does feel related to “More to Lose,” only more influenced by the anger and acceptance of a relationship ending rather than the sudden sadness. As she admits on “More to Lose,” Cyrus knew her partner would do what she couldn’t; and on “Easy Lover,” she doubles down, saying, “Tie me to horses and I still wouldn’t leave ya.” After enough listens, the song’s title takes on a double meaning: As Miley sings of someone being difficult to love, she’s detailing her own capacity to love in spite of that. The question then becomes: Does she love too easily? Yet again, the album’s overarching sentiment snaps into focus: Can’t that be beautiful too?

“Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved” could be a distant cousin of “Midnight Sky” as it delivers the same full-forced vocals from Miley. But here, the rougher rock edges have been refined into a glimmering disco track. Featuring spoken-word from none other than Naomi Campbell, her role is both observer and wingwoman, as she gasses Miley up (“She has the perfect scent. She speaks the perfect french,” she states). Throughout the track’s latter half, Campbell repeats a singular instruction — “pose” — as the production swirls and builds into the perfect soundtrack for a spellbinding vogue-off.

At first, following the dizzying prelude, it may seem that Miley is going to ease listeners into her world with this jazzy, soulful song. But just before the two-minute mark, that world gets rocked by a distorted, fuzzed-out crash as her vocals sound as if she’s falling down a well and glitching at the same time. And it’s quite possible that’s how she felt while making this album, chronicling the ride that led her here. As is echoed throughout the project, there’s beauty in everything – even, or perhaps especially, in moments of spiraling chaos.

This near-five-minute-long song is arguably the album’s most bittersweet, as Miley repeatedly wonders: “Can I have you, if I never let you down?” Though as the song plays on – and especially following the “Phat Smack” interlude, which does arrive as a bit of a slap to the face – it begs a different question: Who is she trying to do right by? “Surrender,” she later sings, “and I’ll never let you down.” And there, it seems, she’s speaking more to herself; surrender to trying to please anybody else, she’s saying. And in doing so, she can never let herself down. “You’re the only one, under the golden burning sun,” she sings.

There’s a lighter, freeing nature to “Give Me Love” – as if everything exists in perfect harmony on the other side of the rebirth Miley sings of on “Reborn.” Or, as she says here, “once you get past the gray.” At the halfway point of the song, Miley’s own vocals harmonize to form what can best be described as a choir of angels, encompassing the listener in the very thing she’s asking for: love. And while Miley said at her listening event earlier in the week that what is considered beautiful is personal, this closing track underscores the one thing that can be universally agreed on as such: a continuous exchange and flow of love.

A magnetic, synth-bumping disco-pop track, “Walk of Fame” is a glorious kiss-off that soundtracks Miley metaphorically walking away from what doesn’t serve her. Where’s she going? Doesn’t really matter; as she says, “every time I walk, it’s a walk of fame.” This song – which features Brittany Howard, a guest who makes perfect sense once the funky and electric bridge hits – serves as a manifesto for moving forward. Because if it wasn’t clear yet, Something Beautiful is about the journey.

A continuation of “Every Girl,” there’s a hypnotic, trancelike quality to “Reborn” – perhaps a necessity for the process of killing one’s ego. Though at the same time that Miley suggests a rebirth, she requests, “give me all your love!” – placing the eternal ego battle under a spotlight. But if that’s what it takes – all the love – to be reborn, here it sounds like a fair and worthy exchange. By the song’s end, in one of the few instances where Miley uses the word “beautiful” outside of the title track, she cries out, “you’re so beautiful” repeatedly, as if she’s looking directly at her newly emerged self. As she said at a listening event for fans earlier in the week: “What’s considered beautiful should be personal. It’s about taking these experiences and wrapping them in beautiful ribbons and bows.”

Recalling Miley’s days spent working with The Flaming Lips or even the inspiration she said she took from Pink Floyd’s The Wall (though mostly its film adaptation), “Pretend You’re God” is a slow-burning psychedelic interrogation: “Do you still love me?” Miley begs to know. “I gotta know. Never mind, just keep it quiet if you don’t…I gotta know,” she sings, waffling between wanting the truth and thinking that maybe it’s better left unsaid. As the song plays on, the torment of the unknown takes its toll, and the voices in her head grow louder and cloudier. By the song’s end, there’s no clear answer, and maybe that’s the point; “Pretend You’re God” could just as well be a commentary on religion and faith, and searching for answers that can’t be answered by anyone else.

This mostly spoken-word opening transitions from a twinkling, dazzling introduction to an aching, almost ominous entry point. Miley draws the listener in with just the right amount of intrigue, suspense and above all else, trust. “Like walking alone through a lucid dream,” she says slowly, as the production swells. “The beauty one finds alone is a prayer that wants to be shared,” she later says, underscoring the entire mission of this project. Not only is it a journey each listener should take alone – forming their own perspectives, finding their own beauty reflected within a particular scene or song – but it’s a journey that Miley had to take alone to get to this point. And now, she’s sharing that prayer.

What begins as a creeping interlude quickly spirals into what sounds like a late-night, on-foot chase scene. The fact that this 14-second instrumental bit is positioned in between “More to Lose” and “Easy Lover” is no coincidence – after singing about the end of a relationship and sharing after-the-fact reflections, that time stuck in between could be likened to a racing mind, trying to outrun one’s own thoughts – and in the case of a superstar like Cyrus, the thoughts of everyone else too.

Without a single word, “Phat Smack” seems to say, “enough of that.” Serving as the project’s halfway point, it signals a shift toward what’s to come: bigger beats, bigger balls and ultimately a breath of relief that marks the end of an era of significant personal growth. And really, what’s more beautiful than that?