Music — Noozify Original — September 19, 2026

Miley Is Happy Now. 'Bass Persuades' Spends 38 Minutes Working Out What That Sounds Like.

By Adam Canissario

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Somewhere between her ninth and tenth albums, Miley Cyrus began shedding the surname that had followed her for most of her career. Her social-media accounts changed first in late August, followed by the album announcement and cover. Bass Persuades, released Friday through Atlantic, is credited simply to Miley. The stripped-down name is more than branding: the album considers what remains when the baggage of earlier versions of yourself has been put aside.

While guest-editing Wonderland in July, Cyrus spoke with Daryl Hannah about the record and described it as a love story that is "never one-dimensional". She also offered its central idea: "once your relationship with yourself changes, every relationship around you changes too." That philosophy runs through Bass Persuades. It also creates its biggest artistic challenge. Peace and emotional stability are harder to make compelling than heartbreak, rebellion, or chaos.

The album's quick arrival reinforces that sense of movement. The day before release, Cyrus wrote on Instagram that the record had gone from its first recording sessions to completion in less than a year, a sharp contrast to the roughly two years she spent on Something Beautiful. The speed was not entirely spontaneous. Cyrus had already assembled a private playlist of 12 possible songs for the next album in June 2025, only a week or two after her ninth record arrived. She has also said lengthy album campaigns bore her.

Almost everything around the project changed. Cyrus left Columbia for Atlantic after more than a decade under Sony-affiliated labels, while her circle of collaborators narrowed. Kid Harpoon and Michael Pollack appear on all ten songs. The Monsters & Strangerz contribute to three. Maxx Morando, Cyrus's fiancé and Liily drummer, has writing or production credits on six songs. Most notably, the only track the couple wrote entirely on their own is also the album's strongest.

The title track established the musical direction on September 3rd. "Bass Persuades" is built for movement: pulsing synths, post-punk textures in the verses and a chorus that leans toward Britney-style pop. Cyrus targets people who have "glued your eyes to the telephone screen," while echoing a lyric from "We Can't Stop," her 2013 hit. Thirteen years later, she is still telling people to move.

The Mert Alas video embraces the idea. Cyrus crashes an underground poker game before leading a group of bare-chested dancers into the streets, borrowing openly from The Night Porter and Madonna's leather era. The single reached No. 35 on the Hot 100 and became her 25th top-40 hit. That's notable, but it is a different kind of success from "Flowers." Nothing on Bass Persuades attempts to reproduce that phenomenon. Instead, the album gives all ten tracks roughly equal ambition without an obvious centerpiece.

It becomes more interesting whenever outside collaborators pull Cyrus somewhere stranger.

"Different Religion" features Model/Actriz, the Brooklyn group led by Cole Haden. His abrasive vocals and the industrial production push Cyrus into territory largely absent from her catalog. Slant critic Michael Savio, who otherwise felt the album lacked "aesthetic distinctiveness and thematic cohesiveness," nevertheless praised the song's "knife-sharp programming."

Model/Actriz also open both Cyrus shows at the Hollywood Bowl next month, and their remix of the title track closes the album. That suggests how much tension Cyrus wanted around the project.

"Neon Signs" brings in Andrew Wyatt of Miike Snow for an eighties New Wave duet with an unusual spoken-word passage. It may be the album's most divisive 30 seconds. Mike DeWald of Riff, writing in a six-out-of-ten review centered on the record's "stranger impulses," welcomed that unpredictability. Cyrus kept those oddities rather than smoothing them into something safer.

The love songs are supposed to be the album's emotional center, but they are also where the debate begins.

"Let's Get Married," released the day before the album, arrived with another black-and-white Mert Alas video in which Cyrus and Morando check into the Chateau Marmont and embrace familiar rock-star excess. Musically, it is a polished wedding ballad wrapped in strings, with USA Today hearing echoes of Burt Bacharach.

Speaking with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, Cyrus said she was reaching toward a sound somewhere between Beach House and Cocteau Twins. She also described "Let's Get Married" as one of her more direct "spit it out" songs, placing it alongside "Flowers" and "Wrecking Ball".

Reviews have split. Billboard called it a "perfectly satisfying and successful pop song," while Slant found it underwhelming. Cult Following gave the album two stars and used the same description. "Let's Get Married" sits somewhere between those reactions. It is polished, accessible, and tailor-made for wedding playlists, but also surprisingly conservative given what Cyrus could have done with the subject.

"Orbit," which follows, works better. The piano ballad is more vocally exposed and handles the same relationship through a stronger image: rather than simply wanting to be close, Cyrus imagines remaining in someone's orbit.

Then the album returns to familiar Cyrus territory: family, history, and the people who shaped her.

"Aftermath" begins as a ballad before shifting into trance territory. Its declaration, "I'm sick of poets and being profound," sounds almost like a rebuttal to the seriousness of her previous album, while another section has been widely interpreted as a final statement concerning Liam Hemsworth. Billboard ranked it as the album's best song and described the vocal as unusually "Swiftian."

"Innocent Ways" is more intimate. Written entirely by Cyrus and Morando, it centers on her younger sister Noah—or someone clearly modeled after her—calling late at night while intoxicated and overwhelmed by her thoughts.

The chorus, "I tried to save all of her innocent ways, grace comes with age but don't tell her," rides an electroclash beat. Later, Cyrus imagines taking her mother's maiden name to escape the weight of "Cyrus," giving new meaning to the album's cover and its decision to drop the surname.

It is also the record's most specific writing. Remove the electronic production and the song still stands. Cyrus told Lowe that adults cannot simply tell younger people everything will make sense later. The song's strength is that it refuses that easy reassurance.

The closing stretch strengthens the album's argument, then slightly undercuts it.

"REDLIGHTS" is a slow-burning disco track with seventies-style strings, the closest thing here to a "Flowers" sequel. When Cyrus sings, "I'll turn my face up to the sky," even Savio acknowledged the emotional authority in her voice.

"Snow" goes hazier, with synths that gradually give way to a genuinely eerie ending. It would make a natural closer. Instead, the album adds the Model/Actriz remix of "Bass Persuades," which moves faster but feels thinner than the original. An album concerned with emotional resolution ultimately closes on rhythm rather than reflection.

To understand where Bass Persuades fits, some comparison with Cyrus's earlier work is unavoidable. Bangerz was the breakthrough. Plastic Hearts became the rock statement many listeners later reassessed. Endless Summer Vacation produced the defining hit of 2023 and earned a 79 on Metacritic; this publication previously called it her best album to that point.

Then came Something Beautiful, her most ambitious project, a visual album modeled partly on The Wall. It debuted at No. 4 before falling to No. 102 the following week. That commercial swing helps explain why Bass Persuades arrives so quickly and favors immediacy over grand design.

There was also "Younger You," the Hannah Montana anniversary song released in March, framed as a conversation between the child star Cyrus once was and the woman she became. Bass Persuades feels almost like the answer from the other side of that exchange.

One deeply personal event hangs over the release. Cyrus's godmother Dolly Parton died on August 25th at 80. Cyrus told Zane Lowe that their final conversation followed her sending Parton an advance copy of the album. She has kept the details private. Even so, the timing gives the project another layer: a record about love, self-acceptance and identity was among the last things Cyrus shared with someone closely associated with her childhood and public persona.

The early reviews are divided, largely according to what listeners expected. Those drawn to the darker possibilities of "Different Religion" and "Innocent Ways" may find the conventional pop songs too safe. Those hoping for another gigantic hook like "Flowers" may find the album too diffuse.

Both expectations ask Bass Persuades to be something it isn't.

What Cyrus actually made is a compact 38-minute record that moves quickly, favors atmosphere over spectacle and treats happiness as a legitimate subject rather than a reward after another crisis. Her voice is often excellent, the arrangements occasionally take unexpected turns, and several songs feel substantial enough to outlast the release cycle.

It may not be the career-defining statement some expected after Something Beautiful. It is more immediately approachable, and in places more revealing. Four songs have enough personality to make a strong case for staying in the long-term Cyrus rotation.

More importantly, the album sounds like an artist no longer interested in manufacturing turmoil simply because turmoil has historically produced better headlines. At 33, with ten albums already behind her, Cyrus seems content to make the record she wanted quickly and move on. The result is uneven at times, occasionally strange, and frequently enjoyable.

For an artist who spent much of her career being told to reinvent herself, there is something fitting about a record less concerned with reinvention than with deciding what she actually wants to keep.

Noozify's overall grade for Bass Persuades is a B−, the average of four report-card grades on an A-to-F scale.