Miley Cyrus’ “Prelude” Does Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd

While Miley Cyrus is no stranger to imitating Lana Del Rey stylings (see: the teaser for Endless Summer Vacation)—complete with dubbing her last album “a love letter to Los Angeles”—it seems she’s reaching a new apex with regard to “unwittingly” paying homage to the tropes typically found in Del Rey’s work. And now, The Weeknd’s (still often billed as Del Rey’s male counterpart). This done on the first song that Cyrus unveiled from her forthcoming album, Something Beautiful. Opting to introduce audiences to the new material with the first track from the record, called, naturally, “Prelude,” the dramatic opening notes to it are complemented, in its visual form, by a black screen that slowly “undims” to reveal a pink-hued dahlia (which feels like a nod not only to the concept of “something beautiful,” but also, again, to Los Angeles, since the Black Dahlia is synonymous with that town). 

As the dahlia twirls in the alternating currents of light- and shadow-casting, co-directors Cyrus, Jacob Bixenman (who’s been a go-to of Cyrus’ since her videos for Endless Summer Vacation) and Brendan Walter then cut to Miley in what is now becoming her signature: an archival piece from Thierry Mugler’s 1997 Spring/Summer “Les Insectes” collection. While the model who originally sported the look did have a more “insect-y” vibe (à la Isabella Rossellini in her Green Porno series), on Cyrus, the couture comes across in such a way as to make her seem less “bug-ish” and more angelic, ethereal and otherworldly (chalk it up to the lighting and cinematography). More like a bird ready to take flight than a bug. 

As for the vocals of “Prelude” that bear such a familiar tone to Del Rey’s, Cyrus already did the “talking-while-a-backing-track-plays” thing on Endless Summer Vacation’s “Handstand,” which itself has a similar psychedelic tenor to “Prelude” (co-produced by Jonathan Rado, Michael Pollack, Shawn Everett, Cyrus and her current boyfriend, Maxx Morando, who also produced “Handstand”). Speaking in a manner that can best be described as “blasély intense” over an equally dramatic backing track is, needless to say, a staple of both Del Rey’s and The Weeknd’s (for the latter, it became more noticeable on After Hours, Dawn FM and Hurry Up Tomorrow). But it is Del Rey’s “Burnt Norton” (based on T. S. Eliot’s poem of the same name), from her Honeymoon album, that Cyrus channels the most with her intonation while talking on “Prelude.”

As the video continues to alternate between flashing to a black screen and then to another image (whether that image is a type of orchid that seems to be of the ×Beallara variety or Cyrus bedecked in her shimmering couture), the words Cyrus is speaking are placed onto the black screen as she says them. And yes, they’re entirely on-brand for the sort of “sound hooey somewhere else” stylings that Del Rey is known for, particularly when she delivers an interlude (most recently via one she wielded on Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, “Judah Smith Interlude”—and although she herself isn’t talking on it, it has the indelible mark of the Del Rey stamp). So it is that Cyrus offers her own “Del Reyisms” in the form of:

“Like when following an image from a train, your eyes can’t keep the passing landscapes from being swallowed into endless distance. Like when holding a fistful of ashes, your hands can’t save the things that have already been dissolved into air. Like when facing the sun through a window, your skin feels warmth, but it can’t be in the world that its warmth has made alive. Like walking alone through a lucid dream. Like saying your name aloud in an empty room. Like witnessing my body standing in a mirror. Aching to be sane, aching to become real. But the beauty one finds alone is a prayer that longs to be shared.”

It’s an abstract spiel, to be sure, though no more abstract than what she said at the beginning of “Handstand”: “We met each other on the neon dinghy. Past the manta rays and palm trees. Glowing creatures beam down from great heights. Electric eels and red venom. In the sky, we could see the riders on horseback. On comets, coming toward us, kicking up with laughter. My friend, Big Twitchy, rode the boat into the light. Surfed the north break. We danced until there was nothing left. Just me and Twitchy, ‘cause that’s all we knew.” And all Cyrus knows, apparently (at least in terms of “Prelude”), is Del Rey and Tesfaye. 

Once Cyrus is finished delivering her “prayer,” of sorts, the music then swells, reaching a crescendo with a sultry saxophone as a backdrop projecting Cyrus’ name and album title flashes with urgency (and yes, the words do kind of remind one of the font and style Beyoncé used for her backdrops during a performance of “Flawless” at the 2014 MTV VMAs). And in the final moments of the video, Cyrus moves her hands and arms like (as mentioned above) a rare bird about to take flight. 

So it is that Cyrus establishes the surreal tone for Something Beautiful, which, like The Weeknd’s Hurry Up Tomorrow, will have a “visual accompaniment” (though what Cyrus seems to be doing is more in keeping with the Beyoncé playbook for her 2013 self-titled album and 2016’s Lemonade, whereas The Weeknd is releasing a full-on, dialogue-laden movie). Sonically, “Prelude” even has something of “The Abyss” in it, a recent track from The Weeknd’s Hurry Up Tomorrow that Del Rey made a cameo on. All of which is to say that Cyrus is continuing to pull from two key influential twenty-first century figures who have managed to remain, let’s say, more “fringe” than she’s been able to over the course of the last decade. With Something Beautiful, perhaps she’s aching to achieve the level of artistic credibility that both Del Rey and The Weeknd possess (in the latter’s case, this is in spite of the existence of The Idol). Forever doing what she can to run away from the Hannah Montana association.