Miley Cyrus Prepping Something Beautiful, A Visual Album Inspired By Pink Floyd’s The Wall

In 2015, Miley Cyrus was coming off of the huge success of her post-Disney pop move Bangerz, the album that had “We Can’t Stop” and “Wrecking Ball.” She followed that record up with a hard zag: Miley Cyrus And Her Dead Petz, a wildly indulgent free-download surprise-release album that she largely recorded with the Flaming Lips. At the beginning of last year, Cyrus returned with the massive chart-topper “Flowers” and with Endless Summer Vacation, the album that turned her into a Grammy darling. Now, it looks like she’s once again ready to head into the trippy zone, making a Pink Floyd-inspired visual LP with the man who directed Mandy.

Miley Cyrus is the subject of a new Harper’s Bazaar profile that’s mostly about her successful transition from child star to permanently-famous cultural fixture. The story includes a few fascinating details about Cyrus’ next move. Apparently, she’s working on a new album called Something Beautiful. Her main musical collaborator seems to be her younger boyfriend Maxx Morando. (He’s 26, and she’s 32.) Morando is in the band Liily, and Cyrus says that he’s always playing her “the coolest kid in Brooklyn’s music” and that he “just inspires me so much.” According to the article, Morando co-wrote the new album’s title track and produced multiple songs.

One of Cyrus’ reference points for the new album is Pink Floyd’s The Wall — not just the blockbuster 1979 album but also the surreal 1982 Alan Parker rock-opera movie. Cyrus had a formative experience getting high with her friends and watching that film as a teenager, and she says, “My idea was making The Wall, but with a better wardrobe and more glamorous and filled with pop culture.”

Another reference point is Mandy, the wild-ass art-damaged 2018 horror-revenge film. That movie fucking rules, and it’s the kind of thing that I cannot imagine watching sober. (I wrote about it once.) Cyrus tells Harper’s Bazaar that she played with the idea of adapting Mandy as a musical: “I wanted to play Nicolas Cage. I love that it’s a romance revenge story. Romance and revenge — those are some of the greatest tragedies. I forever and always will be interested in those.”

When she was considering that idea, Cyrus contacted Mandy director Panos Cosmatos. They didn’t make the album together, but profile writer Izzy Grinspan says that Cosmatos “is now heavily involved in the new album, which is as much visual as it is musical.” Cosmatos describes the record as being “more experimental than anything she’s ever done, but in a pop way that I love.” We’re nearly a decade out from Lemonade, and I generally find the idea of visual albums to be deeply played out. But if Panos Cosmatos is part of the equation, I’m interested.

Cyrus says that Something Beautiful sounds “hypnotizing and glamorous,” and she continues on:

It’s a concept album that’s an attempt to medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music… I would like to be a human psychedelic for people. I don’t want anyone trying to be like me or imitate me or even be inspired by me. I want to impact frequencies in your body that make you vibrate at a different level…

The visual component of this is driving the sound. It was important for me that every song has these healing sound properties. The songs, whether they’re about destruction or heartbreak or death, they’re presented in a way that is beautiful, because the nastiest times of our life do have a point of beauty. They are the shadow, they are the charcoal, they are the shading. You can’t have a painting without highlights and contrast.

Hey! Why not! Sounds fun! You can read the full profile here.