Miley Cyrus’ Bass Persuades is definitely persuading!
Updated: 11 minutes ago
Miley Cyrus’ new album Bass Persuades is out, and it brings together several sides of Miley without forcing her into just one sound. At the end of the day, that’s what she has always done: her albums have spanned genres like pop, rock and country, with touches of urban and electronic sounds along the way.
This time, the bass is the one doing the talking. In Bass Persuades the singer appears simply as Miley, so yeah, “she’s just being Miley,” a constant throughout her musical journey. She never seems interested in fitting into one box, and that has always been part of what makes her music recognizable.
After the cinematic world of Something Beautiful, Bass Persuades takes a noticeably different route. It is louder, darker, more physical and much more interested in the dance floor. The sound is rooted in dance, but it also incorporates pop, rock, electronic production, club music and more stripped-back moments, with Miley’s voice acting as the constant throughout: strong, powerful and instantly recognizable.
The album brings together several versions of Miley from across her career: the energy of Can’t Be Tamed, the attitude associated with Bangerz, the rock edge of Plastic Hearts, the warmth of Malibu and the dance-pop instincts of her more recent work.
Bass Persuades: the title track single
The title track, which also served as the single leading into the project, introduces the album with a club-focused sound and a clear invitation to lose yourself in the music. One of the most interesting aspects of the song is its critique of how technology has changed the way younger generations experience music and culture. This becomes particularly clear in the lyrics:
“Glued your eyes to the telephone screen But you missed the hit without MTV”
Miley can be read as criticising the almost addictive relationship many people have developed with their phones. By experiencing so much of life through a screen, people can end up missing what is happening around them.
Moreover, MTV represents a time when music could be a shared cultural experience. People watched the same videos, encountered the same artists and participated in a more collective music culture. For decades, MTV played an important role in introducing audiences to new music, with music videos becoming part of a shared cultural conversation.
Today, smartphones, streaming platforms and social media have created a very different experience, where everyone can consume whatever they want, whenever they want.
Paradoxically, having access to more music can sometimes make the experience feel more isolated. Instead of millions of people watching and discussing the same music video, everyone can now be experiencing something completely different on their own screen.
The song is therefore asking whether people, particularly younger generations, are still willing to put their phones down and be physically and emotionally present. It encourages the listener to look away from the screen and simply observe the physical world around them. Dancing and experiencing music together consequently become a form of resistance to digital detachment.
And that idea fits the album itself. Bass Persuades is a record that wants to be experienced physically. It is not simply something to listen to in the background.
There are rock moments. There are electronic moments. There are songs that sound built for a packed dance floor and others that feel much more like a drive home. That variety could easily have made the album feel scattered. Instead, Miley herself provides the connection between the tracks. Her voice, personality and ability to move between genres make the different sounds feel like parts of the same artist rather than completely separate identities.
And honestly, that feels very Miley. Her career has never stayed in one place for long: each era has brought a different version of her to the surface.
The bass is indeed persuading
Bass Persuades appears to be less about choosing one of those versions and more about keeping all of them. It is also a much softer ending than the album might lead you to expect. Rather than finishing at its loudest point, the record gradually comes back down. The final mood is intimate and emotional before the title track remix closes the album.
For an artist with almost two decades of different eras behind her, it feels like a very consistent place to land. Bass Persuades is honestly an amazing album, and from Miley, we always expect amazing projects because she is simply amazing at what she does.
Overall, the record reminds everyone that Miley has never needed to stay in one musical world to know who she is as an artist. She can move between pop, rock, country, urban, dance and more experimental sounds while still sounding unmistakably like herself. That is also something that can be applied in life. There is no need to fit into one box, and there is no right way to move through life. Some people find comfort in staying on the same path, while others discover themselves by changing direction, trying something new and allowing their plans to change. Neither makes them any less true to themselves.
Sometimes a completely different path can still be a continuation of the person someone has always been, even when it does not look that way from the outside. Evolving does not mean leaving previous versions of yourself behind. Sometimes, a change that seems completely unrelated to the past can actually be the most coherent thing for you, because it brings together qualities (sounds in Miley’s case) that were always there. You do not owe anyone an explanation, you can simply evolve or trying new things while carrying the same core with you.
Maybe that is one of the reasons Bass Persuades feels so fitting for Miley. It is another change, another era and another sound, but it never feels like she has to stop being herself to become something new.
This time, she simply lets the bass do the persuading, and it did persuade!
