Last week, Miley Cyrus announced plans for Something Beautiful, her upcoming visual album that's supposedly inspired by both Pink Floyd's The Wall -- album and movie -- and by Mandy, the trippy Nicolas Cage action-horror film. (Mandy director Panos Cosmatos took an active role in producing the visuals.) Cyrus has long established herself as the kind of pop star who likes to make big, counterintuitive moves, and it sure looks like Something Beautiful will be one of those "one for me" moments. Today, we get our first taste of the album, and it's dramatic.
This morning, Cyrus shared a video for album opener "Prelude," and she followed it a few hours later with her Something Beautiful title track, the second song on the LP. "Prelude" is a tone-setting sketch, and the tone is true stoner shit. Over a rising synth-drone, Cyrus does some astral spoken-word stuff: "Like walking alone through a lucid dream, like saying your name aloud in an empty room/ Like witnessing my body standing in a mirror aching to be seen, aching to become real/ But the beauty one finds alone is a prayer that longs to be shared." It sure is! The synth-drone part sounds cool, anyway.
"Something Beautiful" starts out as a lush, slinky ballad before exploding into jagged power chords and noisy sax blurts. When the chorus comes in, Cyrus switches from a bold, brassy delivery to a distorted squeak. It's a classic fake-out, and it reminds me of when Halsey made that album with Nine Inch Nails. In the video, she strikes rock-star poses.
Miley Cyrus co-produced and co-wrote both "Prelude" and "Something Beautiful" with a cast of characters that includes boyfriend Maxx Morando, longtime collaborators Shawn Everett and Michael Pollack, and Foxygen's Jonathan Rado. (Cole Haden of Model/Actriz is also credited as a co-writer on "Prelude"). Pollack, Everett, and Rado all previously worked on "II Most Wanted," the Beyoncé/Cyrus duet Beyoncé's 2024 album Cowboy Carter, and as with that song the War On Drugs' Adam Granduciel plays guitar on "Something Beautiful." It's also got Pino Palladino on bass, Nick Hakim on Minimoog, Kenny Segal on Omnichord, and Everett's little kid Xoco on little kid vocals. Cyrus co-directed the videos with Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter, and Panos Cosmatos is listed as one of the video producers. Check out both clips below.
UPDATE: And here's track three, "… End Of The World," a disco-inflected anthem about partying during the apocalypse. Cyrus shares writing and production credits on it with Shawn Everett, Michael Pollack, Jonathan Rado, and Alvvays' Molly Rankin and Alec O'Hanley, among others. (Both Alvvays members contributed lyrics and played on the track, too.) Below, watch the music video directed by Cyrus, Jacob Bixenman, and Brendan Walter.
Something Beautiful is out 5/30 on Columbia.
