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Plastic Heart: Miley Cyrus successfully dances at both weddings

While many rock fans are waiting for the next salvation, on the new album "Plastic Heart" Miley Cyrus successfully fills the niche.

She connects herself to some of the genre's great female legends from the 1980s, thus enchanting both the tic-tac-toe generation and its parents.

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• Miley Cyrus

• Doa Lipa

• Stevie Knicks

• Joan Jet

Avi Goldberger

Wednesday, 02 December 2020, 00:13

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Took all the right steps.

Miley Cyrus (Photo: PR)

As part of the never-ending troll of 2020, NME magazine, which specializes primarily in alternative rock music, came out two weeks ago with a bombastic article.

"Miley Cyrus is exactly the Badass rocker the world needs," the headline read.

The article that followed described why Miley is the ultimate rebel.

"She does drugs," it read, "renews Metallica and has the look of wet hair. With such a combination how can one go wrong?".

This article joins a general vibe in the media lately that sees Miley as the hope of the music world.

Thus, Miley's 13th (!) Album, "Plastic Heart" released this week, is praised from floor to floor.

The kind of superlatives that used to be the lot of exclusive indie bands.

Who would have believed, but Miley Cyrus, the girl who starred as Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel, suddenly became an elite genre.

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So what exactly happened here?

How can a rich Saturday, from a family of country music creators, who began her career as a sweet character in a children's series, become the hope of guitar lovers?

Well, first of all, one has to take it in proportion.

Rock is not what it used to be.

In fact, the state of the genre in Kent.

For several years now there has not been a proper guitar-bass-drum hit, or some band with distortions has caught public attention.

And when that's the case, it's enough for a pop star to wear tight leather pants and sound hoarse enough to be declared the savior of the scene.

Beyond that, the change lies in Miley herself.

The world of music is like any other field in the economy.

It has competition and you have to brand yourself uniquely to be successful.

Thus, in the field of pop, Miley has to win a share in front of a competitor who would not have had a chance against them if she had maintained that sweet image.

Miley has long done in the mind.

Also on the 2013 album "Bangerz" she realized she could not play on the field of her competitors like a sexy pop bomb.

Miley of "Bangerz" broke the tools as to her character.

She was 20, still with the all-American boyish look of her alter-ego from "Hannah Montana," but decided not to anymore.

She cut her hair, switched to minimal wear, and the youth newspapers moved on to gossip columns reporting her "promiscuous" behavior.

Her songs at the time, hits like "Wrecking Ball" and "We Can't Stop", did not herald a major musical change from the pop-rock she had created until then, but the change of consciousness towards her was successful.

Miley will never again be treated as the kind neighbor's daughter.

Seven years have passed since "Bangerz," during which Miley tried to position her status as a mature artist, but it did not go easily.

In 2017, "Younger Now" was released, a personal album that combined rock, country and pop.

The songs on the album told about Miley's life in order to be revealing and real.

The problem was that the life of Miley, a privileged girl, was not really interesting and did not really speak to anyone.

On the one hand, pop lovers did not connect to the relatively serious aspect revealed on the album.

On the other hand, the adult audience did not find what Miley had to offer as deep enough.

All in all, the album failed miserably.

The first failure in Miley's career did not break her.

A bit like Alex Ferguson, who declared after a 5-0 loss to Manchester United that "this is just another day in the history of the club", so Miley was not moved either.

It's really hard to think of someone with such a rich and successful resume at such a young age.

The amount of albums she has recorded under the name Hannah Montana or under her name, not to mention the crazy time she has appeared on screen, make her one of the women with the most experience in the entertainment world.

So true, most of what she put out is insanely plastic, but still.

Reaching the age of 28 with 13 albums in your possession is no small matter.

Madonna, for comparison, is 62 years old and has released 14 albums.

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Anyway, Miley, with all her experience, took the right steps.

Her appearance in the series "Black Mirror" last year, actually revealed her plan.

Miley played a gum pop star in the episode, who decides to rebel and start creating kicking rock.

Her promoter is startled by the change, anesthetizes her and presents in her place to the public a hologram of the singer, who continues to create pop hits.

Spoiler: The ending is good and the anesthetized singer wakes up and performs her revolution is an aspiration.

Miley's rebellion may have been in "Bangerz," but in real life she still had to convince the public that she was no longer a mainstream pop star.

For this purpose, in addition to appearing in "Black Mirror", Miley has in recent years begun to release to YouTube innovations of less pop music.

She has created innovations for Nine Inch Nails and Metallica - and in the case of the latter, she even promised that she will soon release an entire album of innovations!

The public has begun to digest that Miley is changing, but she is smart.

She did not make a 180-degree change.

Miley may have stopped being poppy, but still continued to position herself sufficiently in the middle of the commercial and accessible road.

She was inspired by the early eighties, so the biggest stars in America were rock singers.

Debbie Harry, Stevie Knicks, Joan Jet.

She even cast the three of them for "Plastic Heart", one way or another.

The first hit from the album, the mesmerizing "Midnight Sky", is a pop-rock ballad with distinctly eighties motifs.

The song became a choice of many for song of the year, but the keen ear identified elements from a hit by Stevie Knicks from the early eighties.

Miley did not panic and created a fire-up song with Stevie's song, which even appears on the album alongside the original track.

Joan Jet, from "I Love Rock N Roll", is hosted by Miley for the excellent duet "Bad Karma", which combines ska and the pompous rock of the eighties.

The third heroine of that period, Debbie Harry, Miley does not host, but she does renew her passion as the lead singer of the band Blondie, "Heart of Glass".

The references to the rock of yesteryear do not end here.

Miley renews another song at the end of the album, "Zombie" by Cranberry.

Like the novelty for Blondie, the novelty for Cranberry is live.

It's a strange choice to add two tracks to a studio album.

Despite this, these performances, even though they are at the end of the album, connect well with it.

The singer managed to do something original and surprising here, something that is not easy to create today.

Miley, who looks on the cover of the album like a star from '83, some kind of Pat Benater like that, took the whole rocker thing pretty seriously.

The merchandise she released for the album was made with Art in the spirit of heavy or indie rock, and outwardly the change is complete.

Miley also hosts another star from the early eighties on the album, the idol Billy Idol.

The British singer, who remembers tracks like "White Wedding" and "Rebel Yell", arrives at one of the album's highlights - the punk-rock duet "Night Crawling".

I wish Miley would release the song as a single and get Billy back on the charts.

Really I wish.

By and large, what Miley does is not new.

We've had pop singers flirting with rock'n'roll throughout history.

In general, when you think about it, the distance between the genres is not very far.

If this album had come out a decade ago, Miley would have been placed with him somewhere between Avril Levin, Gwen Stephanie, Kelly Clarkson, and perhaps Kelly Osborne most of all.

But because the thirst for someone to save saliva is so immense, people are willing to swallow it all and accept Miley as the new queen.

They do not notice that on the way Miley also slipped into the album the pop anthem, the duet "Prisoner" with the star of the hour Doa Lipa.

What's amazing is that this too Miley did with genius that gives her credibility.

That way, the kids will love "Prisoner" because it's a bouncy pop song.

At the same time, for the older audience the song will sound more like a homage to the hit "Physical", another memory from a rock star from the early eighties, Olivia Newton John.

And this is how, in fact, the world of music looks at the end of 2020. While the elitist channels fly over "Plastic Heart" in the reviews, Miley released to the tic-tac-toe generation the duet with Doa to please them as well.

The girls hear "Prisoner" climbing up the charts, while their parents hear Miley in duets with the stars who grew up on them and feel connected.

Miley, with her tremendous experience, knows exactly what she's doing, and despite the zigzag it works for her.

Nothing to say, genius.

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