Review Summary: An elevated artistic vision for Creative Miley and Pop Miley, albeit with mixed results.
Something Beautiful has something to prove: an elevated creative and artistic vision that Miley Cyrus has clearly bottled up for most of her career. However, the results are mixed. I often find myself scratching my head at the artsier elements, such as the interludes peculiarly placed either side of the pop-leaning “Easy Lover”, or the spoken-word opener “Prelude”, which feels like an 8th grade poetry piece. They hint at a concept album that isn’t really there. The wall of sound in “Something Beautiful” is complex and musically interesting, in a way that is shocking for Miley, but it’s not entirely pleasant to listen to, and beneath the cacophony is a ho-hum ballad.
But when the album gets into a more straightforward groove, it starts hitting. “End Of The World” is pure ABBA-fied joy and deserved all the global success had by the much more generic “Flowers”. “Easy Lover” is another effortless dancefloor-filler, and Miley sounds like a true '80s rockstar as she extends the word Easy into 10 funky syllables. Her vocals are consistently the best part of
Something Beautiful, she sounds stronger and more confident than ever. Where Creative Miley and Pop Miley cross over most successfully is on “Walk Of Fame”, which infuses rock and disco into a crescendo for the ages – it isn’t artsy for the sake of it, it’s just a damn good pop song, made artfully.
