Music, especially pop music, is at its most unpredictable period. You have popular artists like Beyonce, Drake and Azealia Banks releasing surprise albums and now Miley Cyrus has joined the club with her new record, “Miley Cyrus and her Dead Petz.”
Cyrus released the album right after her appearance as host of the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards. In 2013, Cyrus gained worldwide attention with a provocative performance where she displayed what many people considered “risque” dance moves and several sexual euphemisms.
With this new album, Cyrus makes it clear that she doesn’t care what people think. She even outright says it on the opening lines to the first song, “Dooo It.” “Yeah I smoke pot, yeah I love peace/But I don’t give a f–k, I ain’t no hippy.” “Dooo It” is a carefree, weird song that is heavily influenced by The Flaming Lips, a main contributor on this album.
This album as a whole appears to be Miley Cyrus messing around with some of her pals and creating whatever came into their heads, a bold move for a huge popstar such as herself. While this is bold, it doesn’t necessarily make it smart. However, Cyrus is at the point in her career where she doesn’t really need album sales to remain popular – a fact that she seems to be completely aware of.
The majority of tracks on this album reflect on the musical relationship between Cyrus and the modern psychedelic rock band The Flaming Lips, who she collaborated with for the majority of the songs.
Tracks like “Something About Space Dude,” “BB Talk,” and “Space Boots,” while having nice and dreamy instrumentation, are overshadowed by Cyrus’ mediocre singing and some of her most ridiculous lyrics yet. “I get so high cause you’re not here smoking my weed/And I get so bored/Cause you’re not here to make me laugh,” she sings, as if she were an 8th grader trying weed for the first time.
Some tracks remain interesting despite their terrible lyrical content. “Milky Milky Milk,” and “Cyrus Skies” have just enough of an intriguing production quality that it makes the songs somewhat bearable. The dreamy, fuzzed out Flaming Lips influence has saved this album on many of the tracks.
Tracks such as “I Forgive Yiew,” featuring production from big-time rap producer Mike WiLL Made It, and “1 Sun” contain elements of Cyrus’s last album, “Bangerz.” The instrumentals on these tracks showed promise, but are completely overshadowed by Cyrus and her lyricism, “How dare you bring another chick in our bed/You’re lucky I’m doing my yoga or you might be dead” is a particularly laughable moment.
While most of the songs on this album are nothing to brag about, some tracks do stand out. “The Floyd Song (Sunrise),” is a dreamy acoustic track with some very pretty vocal work from Cyrus. “Tiger Dreams ft. Ariel Pink” is Cyrus working alongside the spaced out production and making it a fairly decent track.
“Slab of Butter (Scorpion)” which features Sarah Barthel, the lead singer of indie band Phantogram, shows that Cyrus has the capability of making a club-worthy hit when she wants to. “Twinkle Song” is a piano driven ballad that is reminiscent of her smash hit “Wrecking Ball.”
Cyrus brings out some great vocal work with a lot of actual emotion on this track, and while the lyrics are nothing special, they at least sound very believable.
Overall, this album is Cyrus just doing whatever she wants. It is clear that this was not meant to be a smash-hit album, but more or less a project that she wanted to do to collaborate with some other musicians and just chill out. While it’s a respectable decision, the album could have been a much better asset to her career if the tracks were taken seriously.
1.5/5 stars
Review by: Jordan Williams, Intern A&E Reporter