Then comes the lead single off her eighth studio album, Endless Summer Vacation, entitled “Flowers.” It smashed beyond measures– almost unstoppable at the top of 2023, adamantly carrying on into the second quarter of the fiscal year, and more than likely into the summer season. It’s a rebound song from her ex-husband, Liam Hemsworth, that twists Bruno Mars’s “When I Was Your Man” (a song Hemsworth attributed to her during their on and off again relationship). It’s got an old school rock feel to it, but relies heavily on disco– particularly with the interpolation of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” If anything “Flowers” became a redemption of sorts– akin to the comebacks most pop stars feel after experiencing a wonky period of “flopping” as the stans would say.

Then the disco gets abandoned for the rest of the album, as if Cyrus is truly leaving that behind. Or so we thought… “Jaded,” the album’s next track finds Cyrus shouting “I’m sorry that you’re jaded,” over powerful California surf rock. The wave continues into “Rose Colored Lenses,” a reminder of the success Cyrus captured on 2017’s “Malibu”: the era where she went “white again,” as Refinery 29 ever so bluntly put it. What “Rose Colored Lenses” and “Flowers” highlight is that Cyrus’s goal is to go for pop catchiness– both songs effectively repeat their hooks while electric guitars and drums underscore the passion.

However, the album that one would think is about moving forward is in fact too bogged down in trying to prove a point. Make no mistake, the project is a no skips effort. You can listen to it all the way through, with hardly anything being jarring enough. At times it’s oversaturated with rock, that makes it seem like Cyrus is not actually over Hemsworth.

What makes the music of Miley Cyrus fun is when she acts up the most. On half of this album, she is too much like a normal girl. For instance on “You,” she attempts some blues by saying the cliche, “I want to cut off my hair and kick off my shoes.” Her collabs with Brandi Carlile and Sia on “Thousand Miles” (which plays like a spin on Hootie and the Blowfish) and “Muddy Waters” (which recalls the bro-country of acts like Florida Georgia Line when she sings “get the fuck out of my house” over trap hi-hats), try too hard to give her some gusto and acclaim. But it’s almost not believable, and as a result they serve as one time listens.

The best parts of Endless Summer Vacation are actually the moments that recall her self-released 2015 project, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz. On that project she experiments with art pop and psychedelics. It’s the type of project that separated her from a class act pop star gone bad, into a cult legend of sorts for the quirky. “Handstand” is a sexy romp that channels one of her idols, Madonna, during that legend’s “Justify My Love” and the 1992 Erotica era. She’s able to get a little dirty with her delivery as she mouths off an opening monologue. Another high point exists in “River” which punches like Depeche Mode and Dead Or Alive, but unfortunately that song came and went in terms of the charts, only reaching No. 32 on the Hot 100. “Violet Chemistry” sees her reconnecting with her central Bangerz producer Mike Will Made-It. They manage to mesh the hip hop energy with Dead Petz to create an exhilarating number that makes one want to dance under neon lights.

All of this being said, Miley Cyrus does have an earnest moment where her normal girl approach stands out. “Am I stranded on an island,” she drifts on “Island,” before contemplating, “or have I landed in paradise?” Her brand of surf rock is much more tropical. There exists a tension that anyone can relate to, and somehow through the easy breeziness we see that Cyrus is a little traumatized by what she has experienced. “I hear your voice like a song on the radio,” she repeats in the bridge before tying back to that inquisitive hook. At this point, she’s realized she’s stuck in her ways, and maybe musically that may not change for some time if she wants to reclaim being taken seriously in certain critical spaces.