After Settling Down in Love, Miley Cyrus Can't Find Anything to Say on 'Bass Persuades'

Miley Cyrus now releases music simply under the name Miley. Her tenth studio album 'Bass Persuades' is packed with ballads and dance-rock tracks driven by punchy beats, but according to The FADER critic Grace Byron's review, the record fails to prove that "falling in love and settling down" can still make for great music.

Byron traces Cyrus's history of reinvention throughout the piece: breaking free from her child-star image, pivoting to rap and EDM on 'Bangerz' (2013), going psychedelic-ballad on 'Dead Petz' (2015), turning country-pop on 'Younger Now' (2017), diving into grunge rock on 'Plastic Hearts' (2020), and settling into more conventional pop territory on her last two albums, 'Endless Summer Vacation' (2023) and 'Something Beautiful' (2025). This time, 'Bass Persuades' is described as sitting somewhere between the radio-friendliness of "Flowers" and the edginess of "Midnight Sky."

The title track uses spoken-word delivery and murky synths to call out to Gen Z that "it's time to dance," while the lyrics list off a string of modern-day crises: "Candy's cut with fentanyl," ranches paved over into asphalt because the horses are gone, and young people who never had MTV but "should go back to analog." Byron finds the song catchy but incoherent, falling short of the dance-floor rallying power of Madonna's "Music" or "Dance Till The World Ends." The real standout, she says, is the second track, "Different Religion," a collaboration with Model/Actriz featuring the lyric "I've got my own god / he drives a fast car." Byron describes Cyrus here as sounding "not like she's playing it safe, but like she's actually going for it."

From there, Byron says the album largely loses steam, sliding into a string of generic ballads and awkward attempts at simulating nightclub energy. Cyrus quit marijuana in 2017 and alcohol in 2020, and Byron observes that this sober lifestyle seems to reach a kind of peak on this album and throughout its promotion — the Cyrus who once sang about bedroom acrobatics on "Handstand," or got high with her pet pufferfish on 'Dead Petz,' is nearly nowhere to be found this time, replaced instead by tired platitudes about love and authenticity.

"Orbit" and "REDLIGHTS" are described as mid-tempo tracks with a mid-2000s pop sound that Byron says could've been sung by anyone. French singer Amanda Lear has accused "REDLIGHTS" of ripping off her song "The Sphinx." As for "Snow," which attempts to document the story of Cyrus's engagement, Byron feels it's similarly lacking in personal flavor — she'd rather Cyrus had directly sung about the moment she mentioned in her Zane Lowe interview, when she felt her fiancé's ring and playfully said, "I'm a brat."

Byron also mentions that Cyrus's fiancé and producer Maxx Morando thought "Aftermath" was boring and added a pounding drum beat — "I have to agree," Byron writes — but she argues the new rhythm isn't enough to fully save the track, and the album never quite decides whether it wants to lean into synths or guitars. By contrast, "Innocent Ways," where Cyrus sings about wanting to protect her sister from bad influences — "She only calls me late at night when she's high" — is singled out by Byron as the moment that best shows off Cyrus's real personality. Meanwhile, the track featuring Miike Snow's Andrew Wyatt, with its oddball outro, is described as less compelling by comparison.

Byron closes by noting she's listened to Cyrus since the Hannah Montana days, once knew "Party in the USA" by heart, and loved the weirder cuts on 'Bangerz' and 'Dead Petz.' Her conclusion is that Cyrus has never quite found the songwriter or persona that truly fits her — country singer, ex-addict, superstar, woman in love, mystic — she's been all of these, but rarely all at once and coherently. That's exactly why tracks like "Flowers," "Wrecking Ball," and her covers of "Jolene" and "The Climb" stand out so much, while the ballads on 'Bass Persuades' never manage to carry the true power of her voice.