Two Paths for the Pop Star

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When Miley Cyrus previewed her new album, Something Beautiful, for people in her orbit, they gave her funny feedback: The music was too good. Or at least, they allegedly said, it was too good to be pop.
Cyrus exasperatedly relayed this story to Apple Music's Zane Lowe last month. She then listed off 'pop' musicians who were definitely good: David Bowie, Madonna, Stevie Nicks. 'Pop really gets given a bad name of, like you know, manufactured label creations,' she said. 'And that's just not what it is. That's generic, and to be honest, it's lazy.'
To which parts of the stan internet cheered: Preach! Put 'Wrecking Ball' in the Louvre! Cyrus's unnamed critics seemed to view pop, like a lot of people do, as a disposable commodity. But Cyrus was articulating the—to use an ever-contested term—poptimist viewpoint, which says that just because music functions as a product for the masses doesn't mean it can't also be excellent.
Now that I've heard Something Beautiful, Cyrus's ninth album, I'm starting to reconsider—and sympathize with—the feedback she received. Her new music is, and I use quotation marks advisedly here, too 'good.' It's laden with signifiers of quality that undermine the very point of the genre she's working in: pleasure.
The definition of good is subjective, but society generally agrees it involves a few attributes. 'Good' things result from effort and resources being deployed in ways that prize discernment over easy gratification. Think about a plate of subtly balanced pasta (which might be yummier with a shaving of parmesan cheese) or a designer handbag (visually indistinguishable from a knockoff). But that kind of good is hard to achieve, and people who aim for it often conflate sophistication with excess (forget parmesan; add truffles). Which is how Cyrus ended up with an album that's so lavishly produced, it numbs your ears.
A 32-year-old former child actor who's been making hits since 2007, Cyrus has never needed much adornment to be entertaining. She has a voice that's raspy and ferocious like a lovable cartoon creature's, and a happy-go-lucky personality to match. No particular style defines her—her albums have made a point of flitting among genres including trap, country, and hard rock—nor has she ever been a songwriter of great depth. But she's repeatedly imbued formulaic fare with a sense of geysering, authentic humanity.
Now she's aiming for prestige. Winning her first ever Grammys last year—for the hit 'Flowers'—sparked an epiphany: 'I never admitted to myself how much it hurt to not be recognized for my work,' she told The New York Times. Something Beautiful sounds like it resulted from a plan to win more recognition. It features contributions from many critically acclaimed indie musicians, such as Brittany Howard from Alabama Shakes and Adam Granduciel from the War on Drugs. It's been marketed as an opus in the vein of Pink Floyd's The Wall; it will, Cyrus has said, 'medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music.'
[Read: The freakish powers of Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey]
If this is medicine, it's certainly pungent. The album is piled high with pulsating orchestration (think Philip Glass more than Gustav Mahler), progressive-rock guitar noodling, and multitrack disco harmonies, all echoing with heavenly reverb. Much of this detail work is indeed something beautiful, like fine gold threading on a gown. Some of it is even outstanding, such as the layered gospel vocals of 'Reborn.' But again and again, the listener is left wondering why a song has become overtaken by a swarm of instruments buzzing and zipping like bees.
The cumulative effect of so much sound is a sense of sheer heaviness. Cyrus and her collaborators are writing in the Diane Warren mode, as if to soundtrack one last makeout before asteroids pummel the Earth. Many of the melodies are sturdy, and you might find yourself verklempt at the epic heartache of 'More to Lose' and 'Golden Burning Sun.' But the singing—while impassioned and textured—isn't really interacting with the instrumentation in a dynamic way. And the music's ambitious veneer invites a kind of scrutiny that her lyrics can't sustain (one mangled metaphor: 'My tears are streamin' like our favorite show tonight'). The listener might be impressed, even awed, by Cyrus's effort—but deep down, they'll know there's something better they could be listening to.
All I've wanted to do lately is listen to Addison Rae. This is a surprise for a few reasons. One is that Rae, 24, is a TikTok dancer who became famous six years ago for doing bodyrolls in sweatpants while smiling blankly at the camera. She then released a fun but generic EP that reused one old Lady Gaga demo and imitated the pop-punk-inflected sound of Millennial child actors turned singers: Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, early Cyrus. This did not suggest anything very exciting about what kind of culture would result from short-form video becoming our primary star-making machine.
But Rae's debut album, Addison, out this past Friday, isn't bland at all. In fact, I really didn't expect that the first great TikTok-to-pop album would evoke Aphex Twin and other electronic experimentalists such as Timbaland, Björk, and Portishead. The production's breakbeats, digital glitches, and creaking synthesizers summon an alien landscape for Rae, an avatar of popular-girl normalcy, to explore. The sound is on trend with Gen Z's '90s and Y2K nostalgia—pining for a time when technology seemed exciting rather than oppressive—and it calls back to Madonna's run of playful futurism from 1992's Erotica to 2005's Confessions on the Dance Floor. But it's pulled off in an ingenious way that conveys youthful possibility and delivers some really fresh bangers.
Rae's prime collaborators are Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser, two relatively unknown women working in a field—pop production—that's largely dominated by men whose tricks are starting to become all too familiar. The duo trained under the super-producer Max Martin, whose notion of 'melodic math' insists that every note serves the purpose of catchiness. But Addison's melodies, while effective, don't quite deliver quite as much a sugar rush. The album's real appeal lies in harmony and rhythm: the interplay of melancholic organ lines, curiously lopsided bass grooves, vocals stacked in tangy intervals, and key changes that seem to reverse the flow of time. These songs aren't exactly avant garde, but they were clearly made with the understanding of how strangeness can invite replayability.
As for Rae, she mostly retains the simple allure that defined her social-media stardom, mixing angelic breathiness with kitschy squeals and spoken word. Her best lyrics reframe clichés about being hot and having fun, like when she distills a night on the dance floor into four words: 'Kick drum, chew gum.' But generally, the more you notice what she's saying, the worse the music gets; a mention of her parents' divorce in 'Headphones' adds a hard surface to a song that's otherwise transcendently soupy. Thankfully, such stabs at profundity are rare. Rae seems happy to blend in, employing herself as an ingredient in a greater whole.
Being an ingredient might seem like a bad thing, but it's refreshing these days. Pop stars are taken very seriously of late—in part because the internet gives their fans a loud platform to champion them, and in part because pop is, well, really getting more serious. Inspired by figures such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, Gen Z's emerging icons—Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish among them—position themselves as complex, uncompromising auteurs. When that approach works, it's as thrilling as can be. When it doesn't, you get the ponderousness of Cyrus's new album.
Rae is throwing back to a time when pop didn't insist on its own importance quite so much, and in doing so, she's drawing attention to the craftsmanship that chasing a hit requires. Her mesmerizing music videos flaunt both her dancing abilities and her aesthetic tastes, the latter of which seem as finely developed as a fashion editor's. But the most important audiovisual accompaniments to this album are the clips she, Anderfjärd, and Kloser posted from their time in the studio. Messing around with keyboards and humming top lines, these three women seem to have developed a strong creative flow together. The only statement that this album is making is in execution: Good pop is good music.
*Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Sources: James Devaney / GC Images / Getty; Aeon / GC Images / Getty; XNY / Star Max / GC Images / Getty; Emma McIntyre / Getty; Jemal Countess / Getty; XNY / Star Max / GC Images / Getty; Kevin Winter / Getty; Bryan Bedder / Getty; Cristina Gaidau / Getty.
Article originally published at The Atlantic