Probably the most egregious missteps on One thing Stunning are its pop songs. There’s nothing remotely near the tepid however inviting hooks of “Flowers” inside its 52-minute runtime, regardless of many makes an attempt at funk and disco-tinged hits. “Simple Lover” seems like one other Bruno Mars castoff, with its strolling bassline, stomping beat, and chirping “oohooh-ooh-oohs.” “You’ve bought the love I at all times wanted,” Cyrus rasps over Brittany Howard’s electrical guitar. “Tie me to horses and I nonetheless wouldn’t go away ya.” This one stilted line sums up the complete music: It’s referential, uninspired, and actually only a rearrangement of items that don’t fairly match of their new configuration.
“Stroll of Fame” and “Each Woman You’ve Ever Cherished” are atrocious for related causes; the sanitized disco beats, the weak self-mythologizing, the drag-diva vocab that’s already been co-opted by main companies. “Stroll of Fame”—as in, “Each time I stroll, it’s a stroll of fame”—can’t be saved by Danielle Haim’s guitar or Howard’s celestial vocal loop. The truth is, Howard helps tank the music by saluting Cyrus with the lamest pop eulogy of all time:
You’ll stay ceaselessly
In our hearts and minds
An ageless image
A timeless smile
We’ll put on it on our T-shirts
A star buried within the pavement
Everybody will stroll round it
Naomi Campbell has an much more pointless job on “Each Woman You’ve Ever Cherished,” solely her traces are so absurd they could be comedic gold. In between Cyrus’ arena-rock belting, Campbell half-whispers reverent non-sequitors like, “She has the proper scent,” “She speaks the proper French,” and “She by no means wears a watch, nonetheless she’s by no means late” in a saggy try at ballroom panache. Cyrus has referred to as One thing Stunning her “gayest” album but, however its “gayest” music sounds prefer it was engineered by a advertising workforce attempting to spike Fiji Water gross sales throughout Satisfaction.
That’s the reigning difficulty with One thing Stunning: It’s extra fascinated by signaling than embodying. Cyrus can entry the perfect musicians and producers, and she will be able to register a real curiosity in additional subversive artwork, however few songs on her new album really feel like they emerge from expertise, or a burning need to discover new sounds. It’s doable Cyrus is totally conscious of her personal limitations right here. “I’m within the document enterprise,” she just lately instructed The New York Occasions. “After I signal a contract, they’re shopping for information that they want to promote, so I perceive that I’m setting myself as much as turn out to be merchandise.” However then Cyrus stated one thing so susceptible it was alarming: “At one level in my life, I look ahead to simply being an artist, untied, untethered. In some unspecified time in the future I’ll get to do this.” I’m wondering what that may sound like.
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