Plastic Hearts
Plastic Hearts is the seventh studio album by American singer Miley Cyrus. It was released on November 27, 2020, by RCA Records, and was her final album with the label; she signed with Columbia Records in early 2021. Marking a departure from Cyrus' previous releases, Plastic Hearts is primarily a rock, pop, synth-pop, and glam rock record, with influences from country, punk rock, new wave, arena rock, industrial, disco, and power pop. Most of the album was produced by Andrew Watt and Louis Bell, with further collaboration with Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. Guest vocals include Dua Lipa, Billy Idol, Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks.
Plastic Hearts debuted at number one on the US Billboard Top Rock Albums chart and number two on the Billboard 200 and received positive reviews from music critics. Three singles were released from the album, "Midnight Sky", "Prisoner", and "Angels Like You".
Background
Feeling distant from the mainstream urban culture she explored on Bangerz and the musical experimentalism of Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, Cyrus decided to go for "rootsy" country music elements while making her sixth studio album Younger Now. The album was released on September 29, 2017, to lukewarm critical and commercial performance. It received an average score of 58 out of 100 on Metacritic, and charted at number five on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 60,000 copies and 66,000 overall album-equivalent units. Its lead single "Malibu" became her ninth top-ten single on the US Billboard Hot 100, while the title track peaked at number 79. Cyrus confirmed there would be no further singles only one month after the album was released and that she would not be touring for it.Two weeks prior to Younger Now being released, Cyrus claimed that she was "over " and was "already two songs deep on the next one"; however, she later said that she began working on the album in early 2018. In December 2018, Cyrus acknowledged that the musical direction of Younger Now "wasn't exactly the home for " and credited Ronson with " carve out sound, where could do everything that , which is more modern." Cyrus later cited Britney Spears and Metallica as musical influences on the album.
Development and release
In November 2018, Cyrus announced she was collaborating with Ronson, and continued work on her forthcoming record. Cyrus and Ronson told Matt Wilkinson of Beats 1 that they were "80% done" with their albums, and tentatively planned for Cyrus' project to be released in June 2019.Cyrus held a private listening session of the album for iHeartRadio executives upon announcing its completion in May. On May 9, Cyrus announced on social media she would be releasing new music on May 30, and later stated the rollout of her new music would be "unconventional". On May 31, Cyrus tweeted that the album would be titled She Is Miley Cyrus, and that it would be preceded by three six-track extended plays: She Is Coming on May 31, She Is Here in the summer, and She Is Everything in the fall. Cyrus described the three EPs as "different to a trilogy" that together would form the full-length album. Their track listings were to be "seasonal" in nature; she related She Is Coming to " light and feel the warmth" of early summer, and She Is Here and She Is Everything to being "colder and a little darker" as the release cycle was to extend into the fall. She Is Here was inspired by "the present of where at", while She Is Everything was to be comparatively more ballad-driven. She later explained that the "she" pronoun in the album title described the "most confident version of herself".
Cyrus continued work on the record following her separation from then-husband Liam Hemsworth in August. The following month, it was reported that Cyrus was undecided between updating the existing album that was completed before her divorce or scrapping that version of the record altogether. On October 20, it was speculated from Cyrus' Instagram Live video that the release date for the full-length album was scheduled for her birthday on November 23, 2019. On November 3, Ronson stated that Cyrus' collaborations with him were tentatively planned to be released before the end of that year. On November 9, however, it was reported that Cyrus' new music would be delayed until early 2020 due to her vocal cord surgery earlier that month.
On New Year's Day 2020, Cyrus uploaded a highlight video of the past decade and announced that " new era starts now". She stated " getting super close feeling the urgency" during an interview with DJ Smallzy on March 4. She posted a clip of the music video for her song "Start All Over" with the hashtags "#sheiscoming" and "#butforrealthistime" on August 4. With the release of the single "Midnight Sky" on August 14, Cyrus confirmed the cancellation of the She Is Here and She Is Everything EPs, citing that "this year has been extremely unexpected I guess I was feeling like it didn't make sense for me to continue the next two projects." She stated she did not have plans to release the full-length album in the near future because "when you write a record, a lot of the time, you're writing your experiences, and then by the time the record comes out, you've evolved past that experience" whereas releasing standalone singles "allows you to talk to your fans in real time". She later claimed she would wait until she could tour again to release the record, however the album was later reported to be released in November. On October 23, Cyrus announced the album's new title to be Plastic Hearts and that it would be released on November 27; it became available for preorder that day.
Artwork
The album artwork for Plastic Hearts was photographed by Mick Rock, who is widely known for his work with artists including Joan Jett and Debbie Harry. It was the last album cover taken by Rock who died in 2021. The standard cover includes the name of the album written sideways and an image of Cyrus with a pink filter, reminiscent of the cover of Generation X's 1981 album, Kiss Me Deadly. There are also limited edition copies from Cyrus' website featuring black-and-white and full color variants. Cyrus is pictured on the cover with a blonde mullet, wearing a Jean Paul Gaultier sleeveless black-and-white shirt with the word "censored" printed on it, and accessorized with silver jewelry.Composition
Influences
In terms of musical influence, Cyrus described the album as " kind of everything". She later explained that she considers it to be "genderless" and a "mosaic of all the things been in before" in an interview for Vanity Fair. She compared her work with Ronson to "rocked, modern Debbie Harry or Joan Jett", while her respective collaborations with Mike Will Made It and Wyatt brought elements of hip hop and alternative pop. In September 2020, the singer cited the heavy metal band Metallica and pop singer Britney Spears as influences for the album.Music and lyrics
Plastic Hearts' opening track "WTF Do I Know" was described by British Vogue as "a galloping rock stomper that recalls the stop-start rhythm of The Strokes with a tinge of glam rock", with People magazine describing its lyrics as "Cyrus singing about the uncertainty of life and is a clear nod to Hemsworth, 30, who she split from last year." Cyrus stated the song is "not that it's how I feel every second of the day, it's how I felt for a moment". The title track "Plastic Hearts" "opts for a more jam-orientated rock flavour, slowly blooming out of a piano and percussion intro". "Angels like You", the album's third track, was compared by British Vogue to Cyrus' 2013 single "Wrecking Ball", where "Cyrus glides between fragile heartbreak in the verses, to a full-throated roar of defiance on the sky-scraping chorus, with Cosmopolitan referring to Cyrus' 2019 relationship with Kaitlynn Carter as the song's lyrical inspiration.Second single "Prisoner" was described by NME as a "heartache anthem" and "is a glam declaration of independence". The theme of independence is shared with "Midnight Sky", in which Cyrus is said to be "tak back her narrative" and being confident in herself. Fifth track "Gimme What I Want" shows industrial influences and reflects on the singer's choice of giving herself to someone else but if they don't want it, she'd be alright by herself. The track received many comparisons to Nine Inch Nails.
Eighth track "High", co-produced by Mark Ronson and co-written with Caitlyn Smith, is a country ballad that "channels the rustic, singsong around the campfire varnished hurt of the A Star Is Born soundtrack". "Hate Me" is a bittersweet song that shows Cyrus making the blame for busted romance. The track has also been interpreted as a response to the negative press about Cyrus and a reflection on how the media attention surrounding her would suddenly become positive if she died.
Tenth track "Bad Karma" features Joan Jett on vocals and Angel Olsen on guitar. It is a high-camp panto of '80s hard rock, which finds Cyrus and Jett trading one-liners over one of the record's few live drum tracks with the singer lightly playing with her own self-image. "Never Be Me" was compared to a ballad from the 1980s and "over a bubbling synth pulse, Cyrus lays out what she will and won't do vis-à-vis new relationships. So, "If you're looking for faithful, that'll never be me" later morphs into the climactic, heart-bursting, "If you think that I'm someone to give up and leave, that'll never be me".
Closing track "Golden G String", classified by many critics as the most complex, according to Cyrus, is "reflective of Donald Trump as president and the men hold all the cards -- and they ain't playing gin, and they determine your fate." Co-written only with its producer Andrew Wyatt, the track also sees Cyrus reflecting about her mid-2010s antics on lines like "I was tryin' to own my power/Still I'm tryin' to work it out/And at least it gives the paper somethin' they can write about".