The critical response to Miley Cyrus’s Something Beautiful exposes pop’s gender double standards

With her latest album Something Beautiful debuting at number four in the Billboard 200 and in contention to reach the top of the UK album charts, Miley Cyrus’s commercial appeal appears as strong as ever.

Something Beautiful is Cyrus’s 9th studio album, described by the singer-songwriter as an attempt to bring the divine into the day to day. It’s an ambitious, sprawling record, but, despite its commercial success, its eclecticism has led to a polarised reaction among critics.

Negative reviews are, of course, not uncommon, and we need look no further than The New York Times’ 1969 review of Abbey Road to see that even the most celebrated and acclaimed artists aren’t immune to the critic’s poison pen. But, while some degree of criticism is inevitable for all artists, when it comes to discussing experimentation and musical identity, female and male artists seem to be treated differently.

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During her Billboard Music Awards woman of the year speech in 2016, Madonna commented that “there are no rules – if you’re a boy. If you’re a girl, you have to play the game.” In the same year Björk observed that female artists are criticised if they sing about anything other than their boyfriends. She might have been exaggerating a little, but Björk’s and Madonna’s points are clear: if you’re a woman in music, you should stay in your proverbial box.

Most of the negative reviews that Something Beautiful received were along these lines. Pitchfork, for example, criticised Cyrus’s “nonsensical lyrics” (translation: stick to writing about relationships). The i Paper claimed her weird and experimental choices created a distance from her listeners (translation: don’t do anything your fans won’t like). They also condemned the lack of accessible, radio-friendly pop (translation: be one-dimensional). And the Guardian said that it fell short of the hits that made her a star (translation: as Beach Boy Mike Love allegedly said, “don’t fuck with the formula”).

For two of Cyrus’s male contemporaries, Justin Bieber and Harry Styles (both around one year her junior), it’s a very different story. While the Guardian also notes the absence of “hits” on Bieber’s 2020 album Changes, instead of presenting it as a negative as it did with Cyrus, it’s seen as a sign of maturity on a fitfully lovely album by a pop star who no longer wants chart domination.

In the case of Styles’ 2019 album Fine Line, artistic innovation was praised by the Guardian, which observed that the most endearing moments occur when he experiments. And where Pitchfork lambasted Something Beautiful’s genre-hopping eclecticism for being tonally confused, Fine Line is praised for the “incredible” sound produced due to its “flock of influences”.

Identity politics

Cyrus has been told by critics that she must choose between being an accessible pop star or an unconventional artist and “can’t have it both ways”.

Even if she did decide to plump for one camp or the other rather than ably straddling both, it’d still be debatable as to whether the ever-fickle critics would be satisfied.

Pitchfork’s 2020 review of Cyrus’s album Plastic Heart suggests it’d be a “no” in their case, at least. Complaining that the heavier songs on the album sounded like “canned, Muzak versions of rock songs”, the publication proposed that Cyrus might sound like an actual rock star if paired with someone like producer Jonathan Rado.

When Cyrus and Rado did collaborate on Something Beautiful, however, they remained unimpressed. You just can’t please some people. Thankfully, Cyrus is either oblivious to such noise or chooses to ignore it, and recently teased that Something Beautiful is merely “the appetizer” for a “an extremely experimental” upcoming album.

In an era where formulaic pop music dominates the charts and AI-generated content threatens to make things even more generic, we should be encouraging the idiosyncrasies of our female artists, not labelling them as having identity problems when they are brave enough to be different.

In her woman of the year’ speech, Madonna also noted that, as a female artist, “to age is a sin: you will be criticised, you will be vilified, and you will definitely not be played on the radio”. Perhaps, then, Cyrus’s biggest offence isn’t her refusal to become a stereotype or her desire to experiment and make music that she likes. It’s daring to grow up.