Miley Cyrus has a new album in the works, revealing to Harper’s Bazaar during her cover shoot interview that the visual album, tentatively titled Something Beautiful, is inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
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Divulging that her main musical collaborator on the project is her musician boyfriend Maxx Morando, who has co-written the new album’s title track and produced multiple songs, Miley gushed that the Lilly drummer is always playing her “the coolest kid in Brooklyn’s music” and that he “just inspires me so much.”
Another source Miley has been inspired by is Mandy, the 2018 action-horror dark fantasy film directed by Panos Cosmatos, telling Harper’s that she played with the idea of adapting Mandy as a musical. Cyrus said, “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.”
While in the end, a Mandy musical wasn’t it, Cyrus did directly contact Cosmatos to collaborate on the visual aspects.
“It was inspired by Pink Floyd’sThe Wall,” Miley said of the project, sharing that she saw the surrealist classic-rock film as a teenager with one of her brothers and a good friend. Recalling that they rented a limo, smoked weed, and wore ’70s-style fur coats. "We really leaned in, and so I have this heart-first attachment to it,” she revealed, expressing, “My idea was making The Wall, but with a better wardrobe and more glamorous and filled with pop culture.”
Costamos, who is confirmed to be “heavily involved in the new album, which is as much visual as it is musical,” describes the record as being “more experimental than anything she’s ever done, but in a pop way that I love.”
Additionally delving into what her intentions are with the “hypnotizing and glamorous,” record, Cyrus said, “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,” Cyrus went on. “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.”
If Something Beautiful doesn't stick, whatever the project ends up being called, it will make for Miley’s ninth studio album, and her follow-up to 2023's Endless Summer Vacation -- the album that gave us her chart-topping hit “Flowers,” which earned her not only her first, but also her second GRAMMY for Record of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 66th Annual Awards.
For more on what Miley had to say about her relationship with Max, Chappell Roan, fashion, music, and more, check out Miley’s entire interview with Harper’s Bazaar HERE.