Miley Cyrus is seemingly more mature these days. She’s sort of quit smoking weed, got back together with her ex-fiancée, and appears to be generally chilling the hell out more. Except the title of her new album is curiously called Younger Now, which I can’t help but interpret as a message to those who want Miley to grow the hell up.
We’ve already heard a few songs from the album which is out September 29. The first was the snoozy “Malibu” and then there was “Inspired,” the latter a country song in which Cyrus hopes people “feel inspired” to save the world and protect the bees before they die. Both of them sound like hippie-dippie pieces of Instagram poetry.
“I feel really kind of far away from that person,” Miley told Harpers Bazaar this month regarding her Dead Petz era. “I just want people to see that this is who I am right now.” Reinventions for pop stars are pretty important and Cyrus has been framing her clean, country-adjacent (I think?) makeover as coming back to her honest roots. But my coworker Clover previously wrote about how that’s a pretty convenient change of tune in an era when Trump is president.
So while Miley continues to say this new album and look is just her going back to being herself (even though she insists all the past versions of her were also herself, so I’m confused as ever) it probably also has something to do with the fact that having your titties out 24/7 and making psychedelic rock with the Flaming Lips won’t win over the MAGA crowd. The gal’s gotta sell records, after all!