Endless Summer Vacation: Miley Cyrus releases the sharpest and most independent album of her career

Endless Summer Vacationin Miley Cyrus, is the perfect send-off to troubled stories and a welcome message to new opportunities. After the first teaser”Flowers,” a pop hit about divorce, the singer focused on independence while reflecting on past relationships – finally coming to terms with pain and new loves.

The pop star’s eighth record is as much a statement about moving forward as it is a mature fusion of her entire musical history. There are moments of pop, in keeping with radio fashion, combined with country, psychedelic rock and 1980s synthesizers. The result is a confirmation of their focused artistic power, as Cyrus seems to have found himself at age 30.

Here are some of the first impressions of Endless Summer Vacation:

It’s not a divorce record.

Plastic Hearts contained the most direct statements about the end of his relationship with Liam Hemsworththe two went through “hell” together, as she mentions in “Jaded,” experiencing a house fire and a marriage that ended faster than anyone expected.”Flowers” – and the countless fan readings of potential references to the alleged infidelity of Hemsworth– made people think that Cyrus was working on an entire album about her marriage. But while there are points about ending – as in visceral “Muddy Feet,” in which he sings ‘You smell like a perfume that I didn’t buy’ – miley he is completely in the present, happy to have arrived where he has.

Much of the album is focused on building romance and intimacy.

In addition to the speech of “Flowers,” Cyrus focuses on love and sex in most songs on Endless Summer Vacation. The tracks carry the hope of new love and the end of romance and sex droughts, like the second single “river” shows. Other tracks such as “Rose Colored Lenses,” “you” It is “Violet Chemistry” are filled with the feeling of finding a new lover that makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world. To go a step further, miley even worked on some of these new songs with her most recent boyfriend, who is her likely source of inspiration. On the red carpets, she appeared alongside the musician Maxx Morandowho is credited as a songwriter and producer on “handstand” It is “Violet Chemistry.”

Collaborations are surprisingly smooth

With confirmation that Brandi Carlile It is sia would be on the album, many assumed they were grand duets between the stars. In truth, Carlile It is sia offer beautiful harmonies on their respective tracks, while Cyrus continues in the center. In the credits, the most surprising contributors are Harmony Korine (“Handstand”), James Blake (“Violet Chemistry”) and Greg Kurstin (“Jaded”).

Miley is strangely more authentic when she shows off all her creative versions at once.

Since your Disney days, Cyrus went through different musical styles and statements about herself. Whenever she showed a new version of herself, she dove in with everything, letting go of the past in the process. Endless Summer Vacation it’s like a distillation of his entire musical career, with all its phases in harmony. The production helps keep the sound cohesive while allowing old friends like Mike Will Made-It go back and unlock something new with Cyrus. In her music, the artist has never been so focused, with the target in sight, shooting to kill.

Above all, the focus is on Miley

At the center of every song is a miley independent, who reflects deeply on what it means to be your own partner. Tracks like “Thousand Miles,” “island” It is “Wonder Woman” talk about the complexity of being your own support system: the sadness that often drives you to discover freedom and relief. Unlike your past work on love and intimacy, Cyrus avoids self-deprecation and reliance on old songs. Rather than presenting itself as a problem, as it has done for most of Plastic Heartsshe makes it clear that the strong will survive.