‘No one stays the same,” sings Miley Cyrus on the excellent title track of her sixth studio album, surely referring to a career of reinventions from Disney child star to Wrecking Ball-era sledgehammer-licking controversies to Dead Petz’s psychedelic weirdness. On Younger Now, she has taken control of the songwriting and production and emerges as a conservative, big-lunged, country-tinged pop star with songs about breaking free.
In Malibu, she mourns the loss of an ordinary childhood (“I never came to the beach or stood by the ocean”), while Miss You So Much seems to take a sly pop at the music industry (“You can drink my blood”). Elsewhere, there are teary anthems; Rainbowland pairs her with her godmother, Dolly Parton, for a rumbustious Southern stomp; while the confessional I Would Die for You would fit on to Beth Orton’s Central Reservation. It’s all really rather lovely, although too soon to know whether this, finally, is the “real” Miley standing up.
