Miley Cyrus: America’s first living, breathing hashtag, and her disjointed Twitter feed of an album, “Bangerz,” make me fear that the impatient excesses of the smart phone age have finally caught up to us. I fear that people, especially celebrities, can now trade their humanity for cheap, hyper-modern personas tailored to fill social media pages.
Until now, I found it best to just ignore the Miley-madness that has swept the nation since her cringe-worthy VMA performance. Like most people who just so happened to be watching that night, I reacted pretty harshly to the performance, feeling every bit of humiliation and awkwardness Miley probably should have been feeling and praying for just one second she’d put that damn tongue away.
However, I quickly got over it when I soon realized what all of this was: Another pop singer’s contrived, misguided attempt at reinventing herself as “edgy” to get as many people talking as possible – and it really worked. Why do most pop singers even do things like this in the first place? To sell albums, of course!
I really don’t have a huge problem with musicians pursuing some sort of persona to tie in with their music. From Bob Dylan’s “drifter/poet” image to Kanye West’s top-of-the-world arrogance, popular artists have often presented themselves in very particular ways as a method of underscoring the philosophy behind their music – and in those cases, with excellent results.
This is where things fall apart for Cyrus. I get the feeling that “Bangerz,” with its neon-lit cover and all-too-blatantly suggestive title, was intended by Cyrus to embody this exaggerated free-spirit persona she has recently adopted: an all-out celebration of the ecstasy of youthful excess. Yet the end result of “Bangerz,” a mediocre and incredibly unfocused pop record, does little to nothing to justify her recent outlandishness, making both feel even cheaper than they already did.
I guess the best place to start would be the hits, “We Can’t Stop” and “Wrecking Ball,” and for those of you who haven’t heard the full record, they’re probably the best place to end. Neither are particularly amazing pop songs, but they’re probably the best the album has to offer. Easily the album’s most anthemic tracks, both are really the only moments on “Bangerz” where the album’s themes of living large are given any sense of grandeur.
The rest of the album, however, seems to constantly forget exactly what album it’s trying to be in the first place. Though “Bangerz” portrays itself as an album exuding fun and exuberance, would anyone expect the first track, “Adore You,” to be a moody, slow-burning love-ballad and a pretty sappy one at that? Something here isn’t adding up.
In fact, the majority of “Bangerz” really doesn’t add up. Cyrus has stated in interviews that “dirty south hip-hop” was a major influence on the album, which would certainly tie in perfectly with the aesthetic she’s going for. But aside from the fact that Cyrus is as out of place in hip hop as a slug is in a tub of salt, such influences are only mildly represented, with the rest of the convoluted mess sporting spastic EDM (“Do My Thang”), crooning balladry (“My Darlin”), and even country (the insufferable, square-dancing “4X4”).
This would be somewhat okay if any of the aforementioned were pulled off well, but most tracks on “Bangerz” either come off as insultingly average or deplorably awful. I understand that songs like “SMS (Bangerz)” (which features Britney Spears) and “Love, Money, Party” are supposed to just be carefree party jams, but I’ve never heard it come off as mindlessly and awkwardly as they do on these tracks, making you want to suffer a mild concussion just to forget you even heard them.
Part of the problem with the inconsistency of “Bangerz” lies in its production, which was in the hands of so many different producers. It’s no wonder it sounds all over the place, but that’s not to say the production is all bad. In fact, some of the dancier tracks, like “Someone Else” and the will.i.am produced “Do My Thang,” sport some pretty exciting, though generic, beats, which help carry the tracks despite their other shortcomings.
What never manages to stand out, however, are the album’s lyrics. Complaining about lyrics in a pop record always feels dicey to me, but the overall pointlessness of them on “Bangerz” feels worth mentioning. Most of the album’s lyrics are love-themed, but they are often so vapid and meaningless that it’s hard to really feel anything when the album is at its most emotional.
Then there’s the other side of the coin, where the lyrics cast Cyrus as a confident free-spirit who does what she wants, when she wants it. But despite completely contradicting herself by saying how much she needed someone in the sappy love song beforehand, the “free-spirited” lyrics on tracks like “Do My Thang” and “We Can’t Stop” never go farther than generic YOLO sloganeering that reveals nothing deep about the person singing them.
“Bangerz” is not just a bad pop album, but a cheap, disposable one that feels so particularly plastic and hyper-modern that I doubt most of these songs will hold up at all past a year or two (seriously, there’s a song with a freaking hashtag in the title).
I guess that’s the best way in which “Bangerz” ties in with its star’s divisive persona – Cyrus’ antics and devil-may-care attitude is certainly the talk of the town now, but only until the next edgy starlet grabs our attention.
Ultimately, however, you should do your best to avoid this one and not give Miley Cyrus the time of day. “Bangerz” nowhere near justifies her desperate, engineered cries for attention with any worthwhile music and makes it all feel like even more of a sham. But just ignore it, as it’ll all be over before you even know it.
PHOTO TAKEN from mashable.com
