Today marked the release of Miley Cyrus’ much anticipated new album, Endless Summer Vacation. It is likely to be a huge commercial success and our critic was pretty keen on it too.
She has often put clues in her songs of the real person behind the mic and what is going on in her life, and that seems to be the case with this new album.
She has grown up in the public eye and many look for clues to what she really thinks about it all in her work. Especially her relationship, engagement, marriage and subsequent divorce from Australian actor Liam Hemsworth.
Cyrus’ heartbreak helped to create the 2013 smash hit album Bangerz, which spawned worldwide number one hits Wrecking Ball and We Can’t Stop, accompanied by all the controversy that came with dropping her family-friendly image as a Disney child star.
Fast forward a decade to 2023, Cyrus has again put the pain to music in her latest album Endless Summer Vacation, which seems to give an insight into the end of marriage, as well as her path to moving on.
The album’s first single Flowers was an anthem to loving yourself, penned as a rebuttal to Bruno Mars’ iconic post break-up love anthem When I Was Your Man, which fans believe Hemsworth once dedicated to his then-wife Cyrus.
Her track has already become the most commercially successful of Cyrus’ near two-decade career, topping the charts in over 35 countries. So, what have we learnt from one of the biggest releases of the year?
Miley’s emotional rollercoaster
Cyrus seems to have laid all her cards on the table, as she processes the fallout of the end of a significant relationship. The second track, Jaded, is about regret and missed opportunities in a past relationship – reflecting on the burden of what was left unsaid.
The first verse starts with “I don’t wanna call and talk too long, I know it was wrong, but I never said I was sorry,” professing that the couple had been “to hell, but we never came back”.
Family tension
Cyrus references the awkward meeting of a past lover’s parents in the new album’s track Wildcard. She sings: “Do you want to play house? I can be your wife, going to meet your mum in a dress too tight.”
She also sings: “I love when you hold me, but loving you is never enough.”
Doomed from the start?
Cyrus sings openly in Rose Coloured Lenses about pretending everything is okay in a relationship – even when it becomes clear things are going wrong.
She sings: “We could stay like this forever, lost in Wonderland, with my head above the clouds, falling stupid like we’re kids. Wearing rose-coloured glasses, let’s just play pretend. Wearing rose-coloured glasses, pretend we’ll never end.”
She’s moved on!
In her track You, Miley Cyrus seems to reference a swooning love beckoning, but is she stuck in the past, or has she moved on to someone new?
She sings: “I wanna set off alarms, deal out the cards, smoke Cuban cigars and get kicked outta bars before two, but only if it’s with you” – this is the kind of romance we all hope for in life.
She also sings: “I don’t need Jesus, ‘cause, baby, you saved me”, a powerful line which could suggest she may have found herself the one, but who could it be?
Cyrus has been dating Maxx Morando, 24, who is also a musician, since the end of 2021. Hemsworth has been dating model Gabriella Brooks since the end of 2019, with the pair making their red-carpet debut together in November 2022.
Whatever the next chapter brings, the music that has come out of such a rocky period in the singer’s life has repositioned her as one of pop’s biggest stars.
The Miley Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation track-list:
1. Flowers
2. Jaded
3. Rose Colored Lenses
4. Thousand Miles (feat. Brandi Carlile)
5. You
6. Handstand
7. River
8. Violet Chemistry
9. Muddy Feet (feat. Sia)
10. Wildcard
11. Island
12. Wonder Woman
13. Flowers (Demo)
