Plastic Hearts
Plastic Hearts is the seventh studio album by American singer Miley Cyrus. It was released on November 27, 2020, by RCA Records, and was her final album with the label; she signed with Columbia Records in early 2021. Marking a departure from Cyrus' previous releases, Plastic Hearts is primarily a rock, pop, synth-pop, and glam rock record,[2][3][4] with influences from country, punk rock, new wave, arena rock, industrial, disco, and power pop.[5][6] Most of the album was produced by Andrew Watt and Louis Bell, with further collaboration with Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. Guest vocals include Dua Lipa, Billy Idol, Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks.
For other uses, see Plastic Hearts (disambiguation).Plastic Hearts
November 27, 2020
2018–2020
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Plastic Hearts debuted at number one on the US Billboard Top Rock Albums chart and number two on the Billboard 200 and received positive reviews from music critics. Three singles were released from the album, "Midnight Sky", "Prisoner", and "Angels like You". As of October 2023, Plastic Hearts has surpassed over 3 billion streams on Spotify, making it the most streamed rock album of the decade on the platform.[7]
Composition[edit]
Influences[edit]
In terms of musical influence, Cyrus described the album as "[having] kind of everything".[44] She later explained that she considers her to be "genderless" and a "mosaic of all the things [she's] been in before" in an interview for Vanity Fair.[45] She compared her work to Ronson for "rocked, modern Debbie Harry or Joan Jett", while her respective collaborations with Mike Will Made It and Wyatt brought elements of hip hop and alternative pop.[21] In September 2020, the singer cited the heavy metal band Metallica and pop singer Britney Spears as influences for the album.[46]
Music and lyrics[edit]
Plastic Hearts' opening track "WTF Do I Know" was described by British Vogue as "a galloping rock stomper that recalls the stop-start rhythm of The Strokes with a tinge of glam rock",[47] with People magazine describing its lyrics as "Cyrus singing about the uncertainty of life and is a clear nod to Hemsworth, 30, who she split from last year." Cyrus stated the song is "not that it's how I feel every second of the day, it's how I felt for a moment".[48] The title track "Plastic Hearts" "opts for a more jam-orientated rock flavour, slowly blooming out of a piano and percussion intro".[47] "Angels like You", the album's third track, was compared by British Vogue to Cyrus' 2013 single "Wrecking Ball", where "Cyrus glides between fragile heartbreak ("Won't call me by name, only baby") in the verses, to a full-throated roar of defiance on the sky-scraping chorus ("I know that you're wrong for me, gonna wish we never met on the day I leave"), with Cosmopolitan referring to Cyrus' 2019 relationship with Kaitlynn Carter as the song's lyrical inspiration.[49]
Second single "Prisoner" was described by NME as a "heartache anthem" and "is a glam declaration of independence".[50] The theme of independence is shared with "Midnight Sky", in which Cyrus is said to be "tak[ing] back her narrative" and being confident in herself.[51][52] Fifth track "Gimme What I Want" shows industrial influences and reflects on the singer's choice of giving herself to someone else but if they don't want it, she'd be alright by herself.[53] The track received many comparisons to Nine Inch Nails.[54][53]
Eighth track "High", co-produced by Mark Ronson and co-written with Caitlyn Smith, is a country ballad that "channels the rustic, singsong around the campfire varnished hurt of the A Star Is Born soundtrack".[55][47] "Hate Me" is a bittersweet song that shows Cyrus making the blame for busted romance. The track has also been interpreted as a response to the negative press about Cyrus and a reflection on how the media attention surrounding her would suddenly become positive if she died.[56][57]
Tenth track "Bad Karma" features Joan Jett on vocals and Angel Olsen on guitar. It is a high-camp panto of '80s hard rock, which finds Cyrus and Jett trading one-liners over one of the record's few live drum tracks with the singer lightly playing with her own self-image ("I've always picked a giver 'cause I've always been the taker").[55] "Never Be Me" was compared to a ballad from the 1980s and "over a bubbling synth pulse, Cyrus lays out what she will and won't do vis-à-vis new relationships. So, "If you're looking for faithful, that'll never be me" later morphs into the climactic, heart-bursting, "If you think that I'm someone to give up and leave, that'll never be me".[47]
Closing track "Golden G String", classified by many critics as the most complex, according to Cyrus, is "reflective of Donald Trump as president and the men hold all the cards -- and they ain't playing gin, and they determine your fate."[58] Co-written only with its producer Andrew Wyatt, the track also sees Cyrus reflecting about her mid-2010s antics on lines like "I was tryin' to own my power/Still I'm tryin' to work it out/And at least it gives the paper somethin' they can write about".[55]
Promotion[edit]
Live performances[edit]
Cyrus performed "Angels like You", "High", "Plastic Hearts" and "Golden G String" for an exclusive Backyard Sessions released on November 27, along her album on Apple Music. She then performed "Plastic Hearts", "Midnight Sky", and "Prisoner" on the first episode of the Amazon Music Holiday Plays digital concert series on December 1, 2020.[59][60] She sang "Golden G String" at NPR's Tiny Desk Concert on January 28, 2021. The singer performed "Angels like You" for a special Rehearsal - Behind the Scenes YouTube video, of her Pre Super Bowl Show, on February 3, 2021. She gave a performance consisting of the tracks "Plastic Hearts", "Midnight Sky", "Prisoner", "High", "Angels like You", "Bad Karma" and "Night Crawling" during the TikTok Tailgate pre-game concert before Super Bowl LV in Tampa, Florida on February 7, 2021.[61][62][63][64] The singer performed "Plastic Hearts" at Saturday Night Live on May 8, 2021.[65] "Hate Me" and "Gimme What I Want" was performed next on June 10, 2021, on Magnum's 8D Special Performance.[66] Cyrus performed "Plastic Hearts", "Midnight Sky", at Resort Las Vegas Grand Opening on July 4, 2021.[67] On July 29, she sang "Midnight Sky", "Angels Like You", "WTF Do I Know", "Plastic Hearts" and "Night Crawling" at the Lollapalooza festival.[68]
Singles[edit]
Plastic Hearts was made available for pre-order on October 24, 2020, with three songs available to download. These were lead single "Midnight Sky", live covers of "Heart of Glass" (originally released September 29, 2020) and "Zombie".[39] "Edge of Midnight (Midnight Sky Remix)", a mash-up of "Midnight Sky" with Stevie Nicks' song "Edge of Seventeen" was released as the fourth pre-release download on November 6, 2020.[69][70]
"Prisoner", featuring Dua Lipa, was released as the album's second single on November 19, 2020.[71] The music video was released the same day.[72] A remix of the song was released later on.[73]
"Angels like You" was released as the third single from the album.[1] The music video for the song was released on March 8, 2021, was co-directed by Cyrus and Alana O'Herlihy and contains footage taken from singer's Super Bowl pre-game performance on February 7, 2021.[74] Sony Music serviced it to contemporary hit radio stations in Australia on March 12.[75] British radio station BBC Radio 1 added "Angels like You" to rotation on March 20, and the record label sent it to contemporary hit stations in Italy on April 9, 2021.[76][77]
Commercial performance[edit]
The album was a commercial success, although in the United States, physical copies of Plastic Hearts were unavailable on the release date due to major retailers' stock limitations of physical music in anticipation of Black Friday, on which the release date fell. Cyrus stated that she and her team had not been informed of these expected distribution disruptions when selecting "the suggested [November 27] date", adding that she was "equally/if not more frustrated" than her fans.[99] Nevertheless, the album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 with 60,000 album-equivalent units, making it her ninth release to chart within the top five and her highest-charting release since Bangerz (2013).[100] During its second week of release, Plastic Hearts dropped to number 12 with sales of 37,500 copies, and dropped to number 20 in its third week after moving 31,000 units.[101] Additionally, the album became Cyrus' first entry and chart-topper on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart, with seven of its songs entering the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart.[102] According to weekly chart data from the Rolling Stone Top 200, Plastic Hearts has moved over 406,000 units in the US since release, as of May 2021.[103]
Plastic Hearts debuted at number four on the UK Albums Chart, with sales of 15,318 units.[104] In Canada, the album debuted atop the Canadian Albums Chart, making it her fourth number-one and ninth top-ten album on the chart.
Impact[edit]
With Plastic Hearts, Cyrus was pointed as one of the top artists who led the commercial resurgence of rock music in 2020–2021. American independent newspaper The Diamondback pointed Cyrus alongside Post Malone as the main current artists who "helped to rebrand rock", stating that she "could very well become the female face of a rock revival".[105] Consequence Of Sound cited Plastic Hearts as a " big pivot to rock in the pop world" along with Poppy's I Disagree.[106] In 2020, close to the album's release, British rock magazine Kerrang! published an article called "Is Pop going Metal?" on which they stated: "Miley Cyrus going rock will bring in legions of new fans to our scene".[107] One year later, the aforementioned magazine cited Cyrus as one of the names who are "offering hope that rock music is slowly-but-surely returning to the centre of popular culture".[108] MTV pointed Plastic Hearts as one of the main responsible for the return of nostalgia in pop culture, adding that with the record Cyrus "completely reinvented herself as a glam-rock icon, diving into the past as she cleared a path forward in the pop-rock sphere".[109] Upon its release, The New York Times wrote that with Plastic Hearts "rock music has found its most earnest and high-profile millennial ambassador", adding: "Maybe rock's not dead — it's just in the capable hands of Miley Cyrus".[110]
Notes