It’s odd, really, that for someone who has made a declaration of rather hating labels of definement, Miley Cyrus ought to be so keen to let the media lap up her “re-branding” as a “rock” artist. Of course, if what we mean by rock is Ashley O’s interpretation of a Nine Inch Nails song. And, if we’re being totally honest, much of the sound Miley is positioning as “rock,” sounds a lot like a more nuanced version of what Lindsay Lohan and Ashlee Simpson were doing circa 2004.
But apparently, when Miley does it—with her distinct twang, as opposed to just a generic one—it’s deemed more legitimate in the eyes of so-called music snobs. Not that any of those really exist anymore if we take a look at the longstanding landscape of what’s been put out since the advent of the 00s. To really drive home the purported rebranding, everything about the album is packaged for listeners to absorb the Rock®™ persona Black Mirror’s pop star-turned-“rocker chick” Ashley O would want. And Miley is very much akin to Ashley O, drawing on her experiences as a Disney enterprise called Hannah Montana in order to capture the vision for the part in the third episode of series five, “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too.”
Here, she continues it. And yet to say that this is her first “real” foray into the rock genre infers a sort of collective amnesia about last year’s EP, She Is Coming (the cover of which signaled her “rocker” transition as she was wearing a Never Mind the Bollocks tee in the photo—and it’s quite obvious she’s trying to create an album cover as “punk rock” as the Sex Pistols by getting Mick Rock to do the photography for Plastic Hearts). The lead single and first track on the album, “Mother’s Daughter,” arguably sounds more rock-oriented than the majority of the offerings on Plastic Hearts. It bears noting here that Cyrus’ recent fetish for Blondie has manifested in this title, as the band’s second record was called Plastic Letters. Of course, as an L.A. resident, Cyrus could just as easily be referencing the nature of Angelenos—bound to have their major organ turn to plastic after all the silicone infects it.
The “this is rock” tinge of many of the songs is what leaves one with an occasional bitter taste, while the tracks she doesn’t seem to be pigeonholing into a genre are her best. The intro, “WTF I Know,” falls into the former category, and serves as the jumping off point for the continued “fuck you” themes directed at both Liam Hemsworth and the Establishment (which Hemsworth himself represents in many ways, with his disapproving eye rolls at Miley’s “antics”). Going for the jugular again, Cyrus minces no words when she caterwauls, “So tell me, baby, am I wrong that I moved on?/And I, and I don’t even miss you/Thought that it’d be you until I die/But I let go, what the fuck do I know?” Never one to “beat around the bush,” Cyrus also alludes again to Hemsworth’s ostensible drug habit (as she also did on “Slide Away”) with the lines (no pun intended), “Nose is bloody/It’s daylight.”
The eponymous “Plastic Hearts” opens with a conga drum that riffs noticeably off The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” A title that feels appropriate to Cyrus’ lyrical themes throughout the album. The “Hello” she opens with parallels Mick Jagger’s own intro, “Please allow me to introduce myself.” Who Miley is introducing is an even more unapologetically brash version of herself—for, as she states, she is ever-changing, ever-shedding her skin into “who she really is.” If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s how Madonna has been described numerous times throughout her own lengthy career. Incidentally, Madonna was going the rock route in her pre-fame demo tape era, adopting the sound and look of Pat Benatar in order to appeal to record executives that might be pulled in by the then on-trend sound and aesthetic. Speaking of Benatar, it’s a wonder Cyrus didn’t tap her for a duet at some point along the production of this record. Maybe she didn’t have enough of the “edge” Cyrus was looking for, like Billy Idol and Joan Jett.
In a continued attempt to dismantle the “myth of California”—a catchphrase that has been quite popular this year as the Golden State gets flak for its non-easy living in the form of constant natural disasters, Cyrus also sings on “Plastic Hearts,” “I’ve been California dreamin’/Plastic hearts are bleedin’/Lost in black hole conversation/Sunrise suffocation/Keep me up all night.” The late night motif is another prominent one on this collection, for, just as she sings on “Midnight Sky”—“The mirror’s tellin’ me to go home”—Cyrus presages this sentiment as she narrates, “Shouldn’t drive, but I should really go home.”
A more ballad-like tone appears on the eerie (in the best possible way) “Angels Like You.” Again, the undercutting influence of Los Angeles also applies here, as it’s somewhat ironically called the City of Angels… where a devil like Miley can have her fun. Now and again, of course, she can’t help but pull an “angel” (like, say, Kaitlynn Carter) down to her level for her own sadistic pleasure. The 80s power ballad vibes ramp up as the song draws to its concluding crescendo, Cyrus once more reminding, “I know that you’re wrong for me/Gonna wish we never met on the day I leave/I brought you down to your knees/’Cause they say that misery loves company/It’s not your fault I ruin everything/And it’s not your fault I can’t be what you need/Baby, angels like you can’t fly down here with me.”
The melodramatic nature of these feelings leads in seamlessly to the Dua Lipa-featuring “Prisoner.” As a well-played metaphor for this year of lockdowns and quarantines, Cyrus uses the analogy also to apply to her state of mind with regard to a particular person—for once acting as the tortured rather than the torturee as she bemoans, “Prisoner, prisoner, locked up/Can’t get you off my mind, off my mind/Lord knows I tried a million times, million times/Why can’t you, why can’t you just let me go?” The accompanying video is a testament to the notion that, despite her best attempts, Cyrus’ version of rock n’ roll still remains tinted with a Disneyfied lens.
A lens she tries to lift off with her sapphic anthem, “Gimme What I Want,” another nod to her brief “relationship” with Katilynn Carter. With a pulsing beat that conjures images of a sweltering nightclub, Cyrus demands, “I don’t need a future, I don’t need your past/I just need a lover/So give me what I want, or I’ll give it to my—/Self-inflicted torture/You don’t have to ask/I just need a lover/So give me what I want, or I’ll give it to myself.” The interweaving of masturbation themes makes this something of her version of Britney Spears’ “Touch of My Hand” from 2003’s In the Zone. And, as we all know, Miley is nothing if not a Britney fan (who she cites as an influence on the record—again proving that it isn’t exactly full-stop Rock®™).
Billy Idol gets thrown into the mix to solidify Miley’s 80s-inspired cachet (since she clearly didn’t think the femullet was enough) on “Night Crawling”—yes, the night plays into everything on the devil’s advocate flair of Plastic Hearts. And because of Idol’s presence, this is arguably the most 80s rock-sounding song of all. The sustained guitar riff here has major echoes of The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” as Cyrus spins the yarn, “Midnight reflection/Cravin’ attention/Under the disco ball/Night crawlin’, sky fallin’/Gotta listen when the devil’s callin’/Can’t shake it, I’ll taste it/When it’s yellin’ out my name, I chase it.” Idol joins in with an intonation that instantly makes one think of, “Hey little sister, what have you done?/Hey little sister, shotgun.” His devilish lip curl can also be easily pictured within the thematic framework of the song, produced by Happy Perez and Andrew Watt (a.k.a. watt). Idol even screams, “Come on!” at one point in that exact way he also does on 1983’s “Rebel Yell.” A song on which he also talks a lot about the “midnight hour.”
So it is that we’re led into “Midnight Sky,” the first single from Plastic Hearts, and the one to spur a mashup bonus track tacked onto the end (along with a cover of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and The Cranberries’ “Zombie”) called “Edge of Midnight.” As the one song a listener could pull to get the most mainstream feel for what Cyrus is trying to do here with her Joan Jett-ified character, it is possibly the least lyrically sophisticated. That is, until you get to the next track, “High,” which sounds like it could have been made during the Younger Now period with its country overtones. As another song directed toward Hemsworth (or is it Kaitlynn Carter?—or both?), Cyrus shrieks, “And in my head, I did my very best saying goodbye, goodbye/And I don’t miss you but I think of you and don’t know why/I still feel high.” Lyrically, it draws noticeable inspiration from Miley’s own “D.R.E.A.M.” (Drugs Rule Everything Around Me)—except she wasn’t talking about highness symbolically there.
Just as Ellie Goulding in 2019, so, too, does Miley now have a song called “Hate Me.” Presumed to be directed at her critics (just as Billie Eilish has recently done with “Therefore I Am”), Cyrus posits a scenario in which she dies and the haters suddenly (and predictably) start kissing her ass. Hence, “I wonder what would happen if I die/I hope all of my friends get drunk and high/Would it be too hard to say goodbye?/I hope that it’s enough to make you cry/Maybe that day you won’t hate me/Go ahead, you can say that I’ve changed/Just say it to my face.” Sure they will—when that face is prettily presented to them in a coffin so Cyrus can’t have the satisfaction of being “vindicated” in life. Granted, her purest form of vindication right now seems to be having the freedom to make whatever kind of music she wants.
This includes one of the standout tracks on the record featuring Joan Jett, “Bad Karma.” As Miley points out in an interview with Zane Lowe (who, as a man, brought up the “scandalous” contents of the song), it is men who seem to notice/be most shocked by what she’s saying in the lyrics. Namely the chorus, punctuated by Jett’s “Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh” as Miley freely admits, “They say it’s bad karma being such a heartbreaker/I’ve always picked a giver ’cause I’ve always been the taker/I’d rather just do it, then I’ll think about it later/Kiss me, bad karma.” Because of Cyrus’ own lack of belief in any real form of karma—being that if it were real, we would see the consequences manifest with far more fury (and, on a side note, she specifically wrote this on the day the Orange One was “elected” president)—she dares it to come for her as a result of her “emotionally reckless” behavior. Behavior that is only deemed as such because of the norms society imposes on us all.
Elsewhere, she elaborates, “The itsy bitsy spider went and spun a web of lies/I don’t play the nicest but it ain’t a fucking crime/I never learn my lesson so I always do it twice/They say it’s bad karma when you live a double life.” But now that Cyrus don’t play that Hannah Montana bullshit no more (side effects which included getting married to an uber straight man), her life is pretty out in the open. Fittingly, Cyrus would take the label one of her producers called her—“cold-blooded”—after recording Plastic Hearts and tattoo it on her arm.
The unrelenting declaration of who she is continues on the more slowed down “Never Be Me,” in which numerous lines are borrowed from Johnny Cash (but no matter how many rock legends she steals, er, borrows from, it doesn’t stop the pastiche from being, overall, a full-on Monet). Originally called “I Play With Fire” (which was perhaps too real a title after her Malibu home burned down), it smacks of something that could be used in Twin Peaks or its prequel movie, Fire Walk With Me—that is, if it was David Lynch’s sonic flavor. Echoing tones of Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love,” Cyrus laments, “But if you’re looking for stable, that’ll never be me/If you’re looking for faithful, that’ll never be me/If you’re looking for someone to be all that you need/That’ll never be me.” She’s a Scorpio rising, after all, what do you expect?
The concluding “Golden G String” is another ballad that pays further homage to her drug-addled past with the opening, “I woke up in Montecito/I was thinkin’ about my life/And the questions made more questions/Starin’ out into the night.” Would that we could all go on a bender that finds us in Montecito. The song’s themes progress to deplore the absurdity of elderly white men holding onto power with such a vise grip, using the metaphor, “Oh, that’s just the world that we’re livin’ in/The old boys hold all the cards and they ain’t playin’ gin/You dare to call me crazy, have you looked around this place?” Unfortunately, it appears as though no one in America would like to look too closely. Cyrus also once again refers to her repressed teen years with the announcement, “There are layers to this body/Primal sex and primal shame/They told me I should cover it/So I went the other way/I was tryin’ to own my power/Still I’m tryin’ to work it out.”
That much is still apparent on this, her seventh release. It could be the whole “let me hit audiences over the head with the notion that it’s rock” angle that makes Plastic Hearts come off as abrasive at times. But in the instances of songs like “Hate Me” and “Golden G String,” when Cyrus isn’t trying so hard to put on 80s airs as though she’s Katy Perry doing a cover of The Outfield’s “Your Love,” the album is at its most listenable.
