Music Review: Miley Cyrus' 'Something Beautiful' is a return to form. 'Hannah Montana' fans, rejoice

LOS ANGELES (AP) — For longtime Miley Cyrus fans, her ninth studio album is bound to live up to its name. It truly is “Something Beautiful.”

Over the years, the Grammy winner has demonstrated that she is unequivocally a pop star. She’s also a dedicated student of contemporary music history and various genres, something she’s made clear through her love of performing cover songs and across her diverse discography (lest anyone forget her 2020 glam rock-inspired concept album, “Plastic Hearts”).

On “Something Beautiful,” Cyrus proves that she is most in her element musically when firmly holding onto those myriad identities, weaving together an inventive tapestry of pop, rock, electronic, disco and even funk — like in the album’s soulful, heartache anthem, “Easy Lover.”

Most of Cyrus’ album comprises ABBA-channeling earworms; “End of the World” has a piano riff that screams “Dancing Queen.” But she balances ’70s nostalgia with belting vocals and wide-ranging instrumentation throughout. Cyrus arguably hasn’t had this kind of sonic variation on a record since 2010’s “Can’t Be Tamed.”

“Something Beautiful” is accompanied by a musical film of the same name, which will premiere in June at the Tribeca Film Festival. The aptly named first track, “Prelude,” is a narrated introduction, which gives the wrong impression that the album only serves as a score to the film. It stands on its own.

That’s because most of the 13 tracks reflect Cyrus’s work over the past two decades. “More To Lose,” for example, is a big-hearted ballad that sounds like it could have been featured on a “Hannah Montana” soundtrack, though her vocals and musical sensibilities have matured. “Walk of Fame” — her upbeat collaboration with Brittany Howard — also harks back to her early discography, reminiscent of songs like “Liberty Walk” and “Scars” on “Can’t Be Tamed.”

Cyrus draws on other past eras too, like in “Pretend You’re God,” which evokes the psychedelic sound of her 2015 album, “Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.”

The album does benefit from a newfound sense of structure, perhaps from the presumed guardrails in place by the accompanying film. Where Cyrus has previously struggled to fit certain songs, especially ballads, into the context of her previous albums — the stripped-down “Wonder Woman” felt arbitrarily tacked onto the otherwise elaborate “Endless Summer Vacation,” for example — there is a continuity throughout “Something Beautiful” in its eclecticism.

There’s an electronic, energetic pivot toward the second half of the album, specifically in the tracks “Reborn” and “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved.” The latter sounds strikingly like something Lady Gaga would have put on “Born This Way.” Coincidentally, there is a narrator on the song who sounds eerily like Gaga.

In many ways, the record is a return to form for the 32-year-old, whose pop reputation has always been in tension with her interest in other genres. But she also demonstrates, through those electronic songs in particular, how her sound has evolved and expanded over time.