FEATURE:
Second Spin
Miley Cyrus - Bangerz
_________
A huge selling 2013 album…
IN THIS PHOTO: Miley Cyrus at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for MTV
from Miley Cyrus, Bangerz went to number one in the U.S. and U.K. Perhaps her finest album to date, I wanted to write about it for a couple of reasons. First, Cyrus released her incredible eighth studio album, Endless Summer Vacation, on 10th March. If many critics feel this is her finest work yet, I want to look back a decade to an album that arrived on 30th September, 2013. Whilst there were plans at the time for Cyrus to focus on her acting career, that was changed. She started work on Bangerz in mid-2012. Not as Pop-orientated as her previous work, there is something edgier and more Hip-Hop/R&B-based on Bangerz. Whilst there is Pop at the core, fans and critics noted how this was a departure from Cyrus. There are some incredible collaborations on Bangerz. Britney Spears, Big Sean, French Montana, Future, Ludacris, and Nelly feature. Cyrus co-wrote twelve out of sixteen tracks. Maybe shedding a more wholesome and Disney-esque image that one might have got from the Hannah Montana star, Bangerz established a more provocative, liberated, and sexual artist. Someone who was maturing and entering a new phase. It seemed deliberate that she was pushing away that alter ego and former life. If the public bought the album in droves and many publications listed Bangerz in their favourite albums of 2013, the reviews were a bit mixed. I am going to bring in a couple of the bigger and more positive ones. There were quite a few two and three-star reviews for an album that is much stronger and better than that. A moment where Miley Cyrus took control of he rpublic image and released an amazing alvbum, I think that people should revisit Bangerz almost a decade from its release.
If Endless Summer Vacation is an album that talks about Los Angeles and is a love letter to the city, Bangerz is more about romance and a young artist establishing herself fully. Shaking off the past. There were a lot of positive review for Bangerz, but there were far too many mixed ones. Before getting to review, this MTV feature speaks with the co-writer and producer of Adore You (one of the singles from Bangerz), Oren Yoel. He looked back at Miley's major leap into adulthood, and the album's legacy a decade on:
“You can’t think of 2013 without picturing Miley Cyrus. Rocking a flesh-toned two-piece bikini, Miley and her twerk-centric performance with Robin Thicke at the MTV Video Music Awards in late August caused an uproar, but really, the then-20-year-old artist was just out there having fun, embracing her young adulthood, and expressing her autonomy. And she brought that fun and exploration fully to life on the album she released a month later, Bangerz.
After the release of her sophomore LP Can’t Be Tamed in 2010, Miley revealed in a Billboard interview that she felt “disconnected” from it and the rest of her older music. “I was 16 or 17 when I made it. When you’re in your twenties, you just don’t really know that person anymore,” she said. A few years earlier, she told MTV News, “The more I make music that doesn't truly inspire me, the more I feel like I'm blending in with everyone else.”
Unlike her previous albums which were fully centered in pop (or country, in her Hannah Montana era), Bangerz found her taking the adventurous route, dabbling in hip-hop, as heard on her hits “We Can’t Stop,” “FU,” and “Love Money Party,” as well as in and her collaborations with rappers like French Montana and Big Sean. But Bangerz’s opening track, the tender “Adore You,” kicked off this new version of a nearly 21-year-old Miley with a tender look at love from a more heartfelt place.
Oren Yoel, who co-wrote and produced the track, revealed to MTV News that the star wanted to show off both her fun-loving spirit and her maturity. “This was her way of showing that she's growing up,” he said. “I think she always wants something that touches her and hits the soul viscerally.” He said Bangerz was meant to reflect the changes in Miley’s life at the time, including throwing “awesome parties.” And Miley got real with her creativity during this era. “She pulls the things that she likes from different things and puts them together,” he continued. “So I think she wanted some big-booty bass and then just a great song.”
To make the track, Yoel met up with Miley in Philadelphia in 2012, where her then-partner Liam Hemsworth was filming a movie. “We got cheese steaks brought to us,” he said. “We worked at the studio, and there was this one huge room, gorgeous, and then a little room in the back that was barely hanging on. Miley wanted to work in that room. I remember [thinking], ‘Well, all right, OK, let's do it.’” Yoel tidied the place up (“I like a little feng shui in the room”), and then the two of them, along with co-writer Stacy Barthe, “hung out in this little back room, eating some cheese steaks and just talking about life. It was a really, really cool time.”
The end result was “Adore You,” which led off Bangerz on an earnest note. Although her other love songs such as “Wrecking Ball,” “My Darlin’,” “Someone Else,” and “On My Own” touched on heartbreak, the R&B-inspired pop ballad “Adore You” found Cyrus embracing the positive aspects of a growing love. The accompanying music video depicted a surreal montage of Miley lying under the bed covers and in the bathtub, suggestively expressing the star’s dual erotic and romantic feelings for her lover. The lyrics were simple but straightforward: “When you say you love me / Know I love you more / And when you say you need me / Know I need you more.”
“When somebody else is excited about love, it makes you excited about love, the possibility of it,” Yoel said. “And so I think that her excitement touched me, and it's just that all-encompassing thing. Everybody needs love, and when you find somebody special and you want to show them why they're special and her talent, amazing talent is to sing. And she showed that the best way she could to him.”
Yoel feels pride for how the song has touched others’ hearts. “I've gotten videos of it being played at weddings and a whole bunch of stuff,” he said. “I was sitting in the car and saw somebody listening to it next to me, bawling and crying. [I’m] very proud of how special that record has become for certain people.”
“Adore You” peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100, while fellow Bangerz singles “Wrecking Ball” and “We Can’t Stop” reached No. 1 and No. 2, respectively. The latter originated from musical duo R. City, a.k.a. Rock City, who initially wrote it with Rihanna in mind. In a 2013 Vixen interview, the pair said Bangerz producer Mike Will Made-It pitched for Miley to take it instead. “We felt like this could be somebody’s first single,” R. City’s Timothy Thomas said. “We knew it was going to be big because it was very original.” A glimpse of Miley’s lively parties was featured in the hit’s music video, which was filled with bizarre props like giant teddy-bear backpacks, a mountain of white bread, a French-fry skull, and a woman simulating slicing her fingers. Even more surprising, Miley got into a brawl with her party guests. Director Diane Martel explained its significance to MTV News in 2013. "That fight scene is awesome. What female artist lets themselves get their ass kicked in their own video?" she said. "This is what I mean about her. Miley is my hero”.
I am going to come to a couple of reviews. In a positive assessment of Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz, this is what Rolling Stone had to say about an album that I think that everyone should hear and get to know more about. A decade on, and it still sounds brilliant and full of highlights:
“WAY TO KILL it, Milez. Your VMA performance put the Internet in traction, enraging liberals with its dicey racial burlesque and scandalizing conservatives with its twerking-toward-Bethlehem decadence. You’ve taken raging-bull control of your sexuality, even if it has often looked like LBJ taking control of our policy in Vietnam. And now you’ve sealed the deal with the Rihanna-meets-Gaga-meets-Pink-meets-Britney party grenade of a record your special moment merits.
Bangerz is the sound of Hannah Montana gone Miami Vice. “You think I’m strange, bitch?/Shit’s bananas like a fuckin’ ‘rangutan, bitch,” she rhymes in a sketchy hip-hop drawl on “Do My Thang.” It’s strange but it’s also traditional: Her Disney-steeped voice never takes a back seat to the wide-ranging production (from the likes of Pharrell, Will.i.am and Dr. Luke), and Billy Ray’s daughter rocks a country vocal during several tracks. Some skeptics – let’s call them haters – might argue that Cyrus isn’t wholly comfortable in her new dirty/crazy persona. But that’s part of the strange charm: “We Can’t Stop” undercuts wild-child woo-hoo with dark, uneasy sonic textures, and ballad crushers like “Wrecking Ball” ride the hunger and confusion that make great coming-of-age pop. “I just started living,” she sings on the starkly beautiful album opener, “Adore You.” There’s as much terror as power in that realization. That’s what makes it stick”.
I am going to finish with a review from Entertainment Weekly. One of the most effusive reviews of Bangerz, I do feel a lot of critics should have been on their page when it comes to a very strong and enduring work from Miley Cyrus. It is an album that can be appreciated by existing fans, in addition to those who are new to their work and want a place to start. Bangerz is the sound of Cyrus starting fresh and making a statement:
“Ever wonder what the grinning naked women in Robin Thicke’s ”Blurred Lines” video were thinking? Miley Cyrus might’ve solved that riddle with ”#GETITRIGHT” — created, as it happens, by ”Blurred Lines” mastermind Pharrell Williams. Over scratchy funk guitar that evokes Daft Punk’s ”Get Lucky,” the 20-year-old describes a heightened state of nude (or nudelike) being to an absent lover: ”Would you believe I’m dancing in the mirror?/I feel like I got no panties on/I wish that I could feel ya/Now hurry, hang up that damn phone!”
The song’s every bit as immodest as you’d expect from a young lady who recently spawned a craze for swinging unattired on public pendulums. It also establishes who gives the orders in Mileyland — and who lays claim to the spoils: ”I got things I wanna do to you,” she declares, after she’s already recounted an orgasm. Bangerz, executive-produced by shrewd Atlanta beatmaker Mike Will Made It, is the onetime Disney star’s fourth studio album, but her first as the master of her own destiny and — with the two lead singles already landing at No. 2 and No. 1 — a pacesetter in music. It’s also utterly fresh, a pop blitz from a hip-hop blueprint, and proof that Miley won’t settle for just shocking us.
In fact, she wants us to know her heart. A couplet like ”We were meant to be/In holy matrimony” could sink the hardiest song, but she coolly carries it off in ”Adore You,” a pretty, goop-free ballad that flaunts a key facet of her versatile voice: the throaty diva swoon. The M-word pops up all over Bangerz, most notably in ”Drive,” a sad-Kanye-esque track that Miley has said she started last Valentine’s Day, after first grazing the rocks with now ex-fiancé Liam Hemsworth. But she rebounds quickly: Immediately following the self-explanatory ”FU,” which folds starry Adele-style sass and a French Montana verse into expertly inlaid dubstep wub-wubs, comes ”Do My Thang,” a ripping dance track in which a rapping Miley issues a general warning to ”stay in your lane.”
Yes, Miley raps. And if you can’t stand Ke$ha, you probably won’t take to Cyrus’ skills, either. Her confidante Britney Spears rhymes too, on ”SMS (Bangerz)”: ”They ask me how I keep a man/I keep a battery pack!” But it’s all in Cyrus’ toolbox, along with everything from mutated honky-tonk (the winningly nutty Pharrell production ”4×4,” with Nelly) to shameless frat-party-starting (”Love Money Party,” featuring Big Sean paying tribute to red Solo cups). She’s not only game for ”My Darlin’,” a trippy duet with Auto-Tune artiste Future, she makes it a genuine weeper. And when she’s handed conventional EDM club bait such as ”Someone Else,” she calls up her chops and throws into relief just how meek typical DJ bros like their hook girls.
Miley’s not one to use her guests as ornamentation — she needs them to turn her pop pedigree inside out. Wherever her passions alighted in the past, she’s obviously infatuated right now with hip-hop and its perpetual drive for new and exotic sounds. Bangerz may be about breaking up and wilding out, but it also agitates for the future. When she sings, ”Been wondering where you been all my life,” in ”Adore You,” she might as well be addressing her own reinvented self. A-“.
Go and listen to the amazing Bangerz. Released in 2013, it celebrates its tenth anniversary in September. Although the brand-new Endless Summer Vacation can be seen as one of her most complete and best albums, I think that Bangerz is still at the top. An amazing collection of songs from an artist breaking from the past, it needs to be heard and respected…
BY all.