Something Beautiful

When Miley Cyrus won her first Grammys in 2024 (Record of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance for “Flowers” from 2023’s Endless Summer Vacation), something shifted. “I think somewhere inside of me, I needed to hold a trophy and just feel for a moment that I have something that I can hold in my hands that feels like a true achievement,” the 32-year-old child star turned pop icon tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “After every album, I’ve been able to say, ‘Well, I made the album I set out to make, and that’s enough.’ Somewhere, I was avoiding the fact that it did matter to me.” Having finally achieved the validation she’d been longing to feel since childhood, Cyrus says she “felt free to make the album that I’ve really been craving my whole adult career to create”. The name of the resulting album, her ninth, emerged out of the ether while riffing in the studio with producer Max Taylor-Sheppard and Cyrus’ boyfriend/collaborator, Liily drummer Maxx Morando. “As soon as [Taylor-Sheppard] played the first chord, I just said, ‘Tell me something beautiful tonight.’ It was so easy, but I have no idea where it came from. The chord he played was so beautiful that what needed to be said had to be beautiful.” In the title track, a Sunday morning soul jam erupts with a “flash, bang, spark” into post-apocalyptic prog-rock distortion. That clash of sensuality and chaos extends through Something Beautiful, whose ’80s-inspired melodrama swings for the fences in sound and theme. The deceptively sparkly-sounding “End of the World” celebrates one last blowout bash before the sky falls. “This, to me, is pop music in its fullest form,” Cyrus says. “Pop gets given a bad name by manufactured label creations, and that’s just not what it is.” She’s thinking of legendary pop innovators who evolved with the times: David Bowie, Madonna, Elton John. The ultra-funky “Easy Lover” was intended for another such icon: Cyrus originally wrote it circa 2020’s Plastic Hearts, then refurbished it for pl