Today's news won't come as a big surprise for those who remember Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, Miley Cyrus's indulgent 2015 surprise album that she recorded with the Flaming Lips.
That project feels lifetimes away from the chart-busting, glamorous, slightly rock-adjacent Cyrus of today, but it sounds like she's planning to lean back into her more experimental instincts with an upcoming visual album.
In a new Harper's Bazaar profile, Cyrus discusses Something Beautiful, a new album and accompanying film inspired by Pink Floyd's The Wall and Panos Cosmato's Nicolas Cage-starring romantic revenge freakout Mandy.
According to Cyrus, her main musical collaborator on the album is her boyfriend Maxx Morando, who's in the band Liily. Cyrus says that Morando is constantly showing her "the coolest kid in Brooklyn's music" and that he "just inspires me so much." Morando apparently co-wrote the new album's title track and produced multiple songs.
Cyrus also talks about being inspired by 1982's The Wall, citing a formative experience watching the film high with friends as a teen. "My idea was making The Wall, but with a better wardrobe and more glamorous and filled with pop culture," Cyrus says.
The other main reference for the visual aspect of this visual album is 2018's Mandy, with Cyrus telling Harper's Bazaar that she originally wanted to adapt the film into a musical: "I wanted to play Nicolas Cage. I love that it's a romance revenge story. Romance and revenge — those are some of the greatest tragedies. I forever and always will be interested in those."
She's not playing around either — apparently, Cosmatos "is now heavily involved in the new album, which is as much visual as it is musical." Cosmatos describes the record as being "more experimental than anything she's ever done, but in a pop way that I love."
Cyrus says that Something Beautiful sounds "hypnotizing and glamorous," describing it as:
A concept album that's an attempt to medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music… I would like to be a human psychedelic for people. I don't want anyone trying to be like me or imitate me or even be inspired by me. I want to impact frequencies in your body that make you vibrate at a different level…
The visual component of this is driving the sound. It was important for me that every song has these healing sound properties. The songs, whether they're about destruction or heartbreak or death, they're presented in a way that is beautiful, because the nastiest times of our life do have a point of beauty. They are the shadow, they are the charcoal, they are the shading. You can't have a painting without highlights and contrast.
This sounds like a lot, and the whole visual album thing feels a little dated at this point, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see what Cyrus has cooking for us.
You can read the whole feature here.