Endless Summer Vacation - Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

is one of the biggest superstars in all of music and has been for well over a decade. After getting her start as a child star then turning towards a more mature and adult sound she has shifted her musical style quite a bit in the past few years going from a psych-pop collaboration with The Flaming Lips, a return to her country roots, a briefly hip-hop inspired phase, an 80s rock throwback album and finally settling on some more regular old pop music with Endless Summer Vacation.

Review by Lav:

This is gonna be a quick one. Despite this era launching with Flowers a single I admittedly like quite a bit, the deep cuts of this record have all the hallmarks of cringey attitude and thin songwriting that Miley has struggled with for her entire career. 

Aside from Flowers the first half of this record is a pretty rough listen. Jaded has a decently twinkly instrumental but the hook is completely flat with stretched out sullables that sap all the momentum out of the song and it gets old very quick. Rose Colored Lenses is a slight improvement with some compelling lyrical imagery and a clear topical focus, even if the instrumental is insanely forgettable. 

Thousand Miles is the record's heartland ballad which of course features Brandi Carlisle and their two styles do an okay job at meshing. Unfortunately, it's one again in service of a very underwhelming song. If you've ever wanted to hear Miley try and get her Lana Del Rey on circa 2012, check out the worst song on the album You which sounds like a Born To Die B-side with a bit more muscle and nothing in the way of interesting lyrics.

The rest of the album is slightly better but it's pretty difficult to come up with much to say about a lot of these songs. One of the only real highlights is Handstand which has this alien little synth beat and these spacier vocals that I like a lot. Even if the lyrics can be really hard to tolerate I still enjoy the song. The albums second single River is decently catchy and it feels like one of the only songs here that's indicative of what I expected the album to be following Flowers.

Sia and James Blake share writing credits on Violet Chemistry and Sia herself even features on the following track Muddy Feet, but both are just painfully okay and Muddy Feet is even quite cringey at points. Even when there's one step forward though, there's two steps back. Wildcard might be my favorite vocal performance from Miley on the record, which is a shame because it's wasted on the most vapid hook I've heard all year. Closing track Wonder Woman is one of the only songs here that manages to really be ABOUT something, But it has a painfully uninspired sound palette that fails to leave any kind of impression on me. 

I think you could argue that if you broke all these songs down into their individual parts, Miley does more right on Endless Summer Vacation than most of her albums. The problem is that these individual parts so rarely come together to make even decent songs and the utter lack of real highlights throughout is crippling. Flowers had kind of shifted my expectations for this album but after hearing it, I don't know why I ever thought Miley would be anyone other than Miley. 5/10

For more pop check out my review of Kali Uchis' Red Moon In Venus