Celeb News: Bangerz Review Thread → 62 on MC; "Miley has race issues"

YoYo

66 out of 100

LAUGHED from beginning to end.

http://prettymuchamazing.com/reviews...-cyrus-bangerz

Quote:

o I’m listening to this Miley Cyrus album Bangerz and keep thinking about The Sound of Music. No, not “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” though I eagerly/queasily await Miley’s raunchy, tongue-wagging EDM cover of that song (aside: “20 Going on 21” would be a legal-drinking anthem for the ages!) later on her mission to make it clear she Is No Longer A Child™ and therefore must necessarily ruin via sexualization and problematic race relations anything we collectively associate with childhood (R.I.P., the teddy bear). No, this is the first time I’ve thought of The Sound of Music since Gwen Stefani sampled “The Lonely Goatherd” and what’s coming to mind is that song the nuns sing – the one that goes, “How do you solve a problem like Maria”? The nuns kick Maria out of the convent and she becomes a warm, caring governess and (spoiler alert) eventually stepmother to seven Austrian children while the Nazis begin their ascent to power. Nazis aside, would that we could do the same with Miley Cyrus, but since it’d be tough to find parents willing to leave their tots in her charge, we’re back to square one. How do we solve a problem like Miley Cyrus?

This woman, who was once a ubiquitous but tweens-only idol back in the Hannah Montana days, has made it her business to stay relevant and either she or her handlers – presumably not her father Billy Ray – has arrived at the obvious, bulletproof strategy for maintaining cultural power: play dirty. By offending people – through thoughtless racial appropriation, revealing clothing or no clothing at all, sticking out her tongue, oh my! – she’s found an easy way to hog the limelight. The offenses are pitched at those desperate to preserve moral decency in American popular culture, a group that weirdly includes both extremely religious parents and academy-trained critical thinkers – all easily written off as consummate reactionaries and over-analyzers. Meanwhile, everyone else gets to attend Miley’s big Party in the U.S.A. and luxuriate in the thrill of transgressing the boundaries their excluded peers are hell-bent on delineating in a million online thinkpieces, and they get to do this without feeling like they’re really partaking in anything that terrible because, hey, it’s the VMAs, it’s on MTV, how bad could it be, right? So how do we solve a problem like Miley Cyrus? She can’t be ignored because then she’d get racist and naked all over the place, but every time a criticism is publicly leveled at her, she takes it as a sign that she should be doing more to “forget the haters,” as her smash single from this summer sagely suggests. Every outcry boosts her confidence. Poor Sinead O’Connor penned a rather lovely open letter to the young pop star imploring her not to “prostitute” herself for the music industry and Miley…responded by comparing her to Amanda Bynes and mocking her mental health. This is Sinead O’Connor we’re talking about! Come on, have some respect. But no, you just can’t win with Miley! Can’t live with ‘er, can’t live without ‘er, am I right? Heh. Oh, man.

I’m tired, guys. I’m so tired of all this ********. I’m tired of seeing GIFs of Miley Cyrus twerking on famous paintings and I’m tired of Amanda Palmer and Jon Caramanica telling us all to “just let her grow up in peace” and I’m tired of Miley talking nonchalantly about Kanye texting her and I’m tired of Terry Richardson photos where Miley’s wearing some sort of vinyl onesie with built-in camel toe. I’m only 21 and I think about how I would talk to my nonexistent daughter about the total pubic wax job those onesies reveal and I’m tired of having to imagine that because I’m still young and I run things, things don’t run me. What I wanted when I sat down to listen to this album was an album that would validate the most exhausting internet buzz cycle I’ve ever lived through. This album needed to live up to its title, and, well, it doesn’t. It’s as tedious as the buzz cycle itself, maybe more so.

It’s not a problem per se that Miley Cyrus is a patently inauthentic pop star, although having 17-year-old New Zealander Lorde top the Billboard Hot 100 this week doesn’t do Miley many favors by suggesting that an authentic pop star is a real possibility. We all know that pop is and has always been performative. But with Miley it’s so painfully obvious; listening to Bangerz, we don’t get caught up in the performance enough to overlook or partake in its artifice. It’s all so calculated. It wasn’t that long ago that Miley was insisting that she’d never heard a Jay-Z song, and now there are reports that in 2012 she straight-up told her main producer Mike Will Made-It that she wanted a “black” sound for this record. She characterizes Bangerz as having a “dirty Southern rap” feel, which is hilarious because dirty Southern rap, this definitely ain’t. She and her producers have namechecked Michael and Janet Jackson, Frank Ocean, and Motown as influences (?). She’s started accessorizing with the bodies of black women and trying to twerk. Personally I think the whole racial-appropriation side to this stuff is bad news, but you needn’t be on the same page to find this album a disaster. Bangerz is the sound of a 20-year-old woman trying so, so hard to attain her idea of capital(ist)-C Cool, so hard that she’s brought in various pop svengalis on six-figure salaries to help her out, and failing outright. Miley Cyrus has a solid singing voice – a little thin but pleasantly husky, like Rihanna on 4 packs of Lucky Strikes a day, and she sure can muster up the breath to belt when she needs to. With the right songwriters and producers, I can see her making an excellent pop album somewhere down the line. However, this isn’t it.

Largely embarrassing, Bangerz is the most fun when it’s so ridiculous that criticism seems futile. “4×4” is a country-rap track with accordion samples and a Nelly guest verse that scans on first listen as an abomination but by the second time through has bloomed into enjoyable kitsch. In a similar vein is the French Montana-featuring “FU,” a jazzy, EDM-jacked cabaret number that would’ve been a welcome addition to the soundtrack for any Baz Luhrmann film. The mixture of elements on these songs is so gaudy and silly that there’s not really any way to sell it straight, which is why both succeed. Now, compare “FU” to another breakup song on the album, “Wrecking Ball,” which with its from-the-gut vocal histrionics and walloping post-Skrillex production wants nothing more than to earn its video’s pilfering of O’Connor’s iconic “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Both “FU” and “Wrecking Ball” are wildly funny, but we’re only laughing with the singer during the former. Bangerz needs more moments like that, but mostly it’s fare that shares a gravely misguided self-seriousness with “Wrecking Ball.” Miley Cyrus is very serious about having fun, and that does her album in; the record is never emotionally convincing, and I’m generously, and perhaps illogically considering “fun” an “emotion” here.

The only track on this album that really deserves recommendation is the one that needs none: the inescapable “We Can’t Stop” is still good, dopey fun that incorporates the hip-hop influence better than anything else on Bangerz and gets all of the record’s most quotable lyrics to boot. But one decent track and two cheesily amusing ones out of thirteen is a deplorable batting average for an album with this much money behind it. Pharrell even rips off his own production on recent super-hit “Blurred Lines” for “#GETITRIGHT,” and it still falls flat. Most of the music here is even worse than these examples, because it’s utterly unremarkable. Time for some brutal honesty: these so-called Bangerz are hookless, poorly written, dully produced songs, and their singer doesn’t have the charisma or talent to see them through. That’s the saddest thing of all about Bangerz: how it was meant to be Miley Cyrus’s big debut as a “mature” pop singer and yet ends up sounding like it could be anybody’s. For all her rebelliousness and defiance, this record does not communicate a strong sense of personality. Obvious predecessor Britney Spears, who appears here on, and fails to redeem, the title track, could adapt to the context of each of the songs in her diverse oeuvre and still sound like Britney Spears, convey the idea of who Britney Spears was supposed to be. Miley doesn’t adapt to her songs, she’s subsumed, and winds up sounding like nobody in particular.

Do I think Miley’s got some race issues to sort out? Do I wish she’d put her tongue back in her mouth? Do I think I looked better with that haircut? Yes, yes, and absolutely, but here’s something more important to consider: single “Wrecking Ball” is, to put it kindly, mediocre pop. It’s not a stretch to claim the song scored its hit-worthy sales mostly because Miley got naked and humped construction equipment in the music video. That she needs to work so hard and, in O’Connor’s phrase, “prostitute” herself for attention bodes ill for this particular pop star’s future. The VMAs and the “We Can’t Stop” video were appalling, but the discussion immediately turned to broader political discourse: Miley was treated as a symptom, a vessel, and an influence on young children in the ensuing melee, but rarely as a person and never as a singer. The now-infamous “Wrecking Ball” parody that superimposes Nicolas Cage’s face over Miley’s is a great comedic meme because it’s Cage’s head atop a naked female body straddling a wrecking ball, not because it’s Miley’s body and certainly not because the song playing is “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus. Meanwhile, Lorde’s claimed the #1 spot on the charts with a catchy, laid-back tune that owes just as much to rap as “We Can’t Stop” does, while scorning the “gold teeth, Grey Goose-sippin’ in the bathroom” lifestyle that is “We Can’t Stop”’s whole reason for existence. Miley knows how to get our attention, but not how to hold it; how to stir up trouble, but not how to manage it; how to sing a song, but not how to sell it. If all it takes is a Photoshop job of Nicolas Cage’s face to distract her audience entirely, that’s a sign that despite the sensationalism, the sour attitude, and the half-assed twerking, Miley Cyrus simply isn’t very interesting. Some dreams, money can’t buy. [D+]

Entertainment Weekly

91 out of 100

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Ever wonder what the grinning naked women in Robin Thicke's ''Blurred Lines'' video were thinking? Miley Cyrus might've solved that riddle with ''#GETITRIGHT'' — created, as it happens, by ''Blurred Lines'' mastermind Pharrell Williams. Over scratchy funk guitar that evokes Daft Punk's ''Get Lucky,'' the 20-year-old describes a heightened state of nude (or nudelike) being to an absent lover: ''Would you believe I'm dancing in the mirror?/I feel like I got no panties on/I wish that I could feel ya/Now hurry, hang up that damn phone!''

The song's every bit as immodest as you'd expect from a young lady who recently spawned a craze for swinging unattired on public pendulums. It also establishes who gives the orders in Mileyland — and who lays claim to the spoils: ''I got things I wanna do to you,'' she declares, after she's already recounted an orgasm. Bangerz, executive-produced by shrewd Atlanta beatmaker Mike Will Made It, is the onetime Disney star's fourth studio album, but her first as the master of her own destiny and — with the two lead singles already landing at No. 1 — a pacesetter in music. It's also utterly fresh, a pop blitz from a hip-hop blueprint, and proof that Miley won't settle for just shocking us.

In fact, she wants us to know her heart. A couplet like ''We were meant to be/In holy matrimony'' could sink the hardiest song, but she coolly carries it off in ''Adore You,'' a pretty, goop-free ballad that flaunts a key facet of her versatile voice: the throaty diva swoon. The M-word pops up all over Bangerz, most notably in ''Drive,'' a sad-Kanye-esque track that Miley has said she started last Valentine's Day, after first grazing the rocks with now ex-fiancé Liam Hemsworth. But she rebounds quickly: Immediately following the self-explanatory ''FU,'' which folds starry Adele-style sass and a French Montana verse into expertly inlaid dubstep wub-wubs, comes ''Do My Thang,'' a ripping dance track in which a rapping Miley issues a general warning to ''stay in your lane.''

Yes, Miley raps. And if you can't stand Ke$ha, you probably won't take to Cyrus' skills, either. Her confidante Britney Spears rhymes too, on ''SMS (Bangerz)'': ''They ask me how I keep a man/I keep a battery pack!'' But it's all in Cyrus' toolbox, along with everything from mutated honky-tonk (the winningly nutty Pharrell production ''4x4,'' with Nelly) to shameless frat-party-starting (''Love Money Party,'' featuring Big Sean paying tribute to red Solo cups). She's not only game for ''My Darlin','' a trippy duet with Auto-Tune artiste Future, she makes it a genuine weeper. And when she's handed conventional EDM club bait such as ''Someone Else,'' she calls up her chops and throws into relief just how meek typical DJ bros like their hook girls.

Miley's not one to use her guests as ornamentation — she needs them to turn her pop pedigree inside out. Wherever her passions alighted in the past, she's obviously infatuated right now with hip-hop and its perpetual drive for new and exotic sounds. Bangerz may be about breaking up and wilding out, but it also agitates for the future. When she sings, ''Been wondering where you been all my life,'' in ''Adore You,'' she might as well be addressing her own reinvented self. A-

Best Tracks
''SMS (BANGERZ)'' - A merry rap-off with Britney
''My Darlin''' - A woozy ballad

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20740686,00.html

Billboard

70 out of 100

review

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Set aside, at least for a moment, the knowingly outrageous outfits, the frequent tongue unfurling and anything involving the word "twerk." On a purely artistic level, Miley Cyrus is currently living out the dream of any singer-songwriter who has felt pigeonholed by either an unshakeable past representation of self or perceived radio trends. Over the past six months, Cyrus has torched her "Hannah Montana" persona and reinvented herself as a rap-loving, profanity-embracing pop cypher, as she promised she would; she has dismissed her last Hollywood Records effort, 2010's "Can't Be Tamed," as an irrelevant relic from another life, and been able to present an uncompromising vision of her music and its surrounding madness without hesitation. And she has, by all metrics, succeeded more wildly than even she probably could have ever imagined, without buckling to anything aside from her own instincts. Most musical artists would kill to have that kind of freedom and be so universally noticed because of it. Pop purveyors have expressed extremely diverse reactions to Cyrus' recent music and antics, but in a season in which Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Justin Timberlake are all releasing new albums, "Bangerz" is the album everyone is craning their necks toward, because Cyrus is the artist everyone is talking about.

"Bangerz," Cyrus' fourth studio album and RCA Records debut, is, for better and worse, the sound of a singer following a pair of enormous singles with a full-length completely from the perspective that birthed those two hits. In other words, the album finds Cyrus working with who she wants to work with, singing about what she wants to sing about, as if she's a kid in an arcade with a pocket of limitless quarters. Sometimes, the 20-year-old's vision needs to be adjusted, as on the manic French Montana collaboration "FU" and on "Someone Else," which feels like the album's hundredth dramatic breakup song and plays for nearly five minutes. But more often than not, Cyrus' daring attitude guides her to invention: "4x4," a country-tinged mash-up with Nelly, sounds awful in concept but is executed efficiently; "Do My Thang" could have been a sneering declaration of independence but invites the listener to share Cyrus' youthful glee. "We Can't Stop" still knocks, but "Wrecking Ball" actually hints at where Cyrus' career may take her next, since the vocalist expertly handles the mid-tempo ballad without a whiff of gimmickry. Could Cyrus fashion a long musical run based on these big-hearted roof-rattlers? Probably, yes.

"Every time I do something, I want to remember, 'This is what separates me from everyone else,'" Cyrus says in the upcoming MTV documentary "Miley Cyrus: The Movement." "Bangerz" is neither the best nor worst pop album released this year, but it's inarguably the most fiercely individual. Never mind the "z" at the end of the album title, because one thing Miley Cyrus' "Bangerz" won't do is put you to sleep.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/re...y-track-review

other reviews

New York Daily

2 stars out of 5

Miley Cyrus' new album doesn't twerk: 'Bangerz' is a disjointed mess that seeks to provoke instead of delight

Quote:

The former Hannah Montana's fourth album 'Bangerz' continues the ex-Disney star's attempt to shock, but the twerking twerp doesn't pull off a decent tune

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...#ixzz2gTEbzSyD

There's sobering news for Miley Cyrus on her just-leaked new CD, and it’s that there’s no audio equivalent to twerking.
Which leaves her with limited chances to expand on the spectacular media splash she made with her recent go-for-broke MTV performance.
[size=5"This time, it’s all down to an element we seldom think of when it comes to Miley: Music.[/size]. So, just what sound has the star chosen for this, her first fully adult CD? (The disc won’t be officially released until Tuesday, but it leaked Monday evening on iTunes).
As you might guess, it’s a mixed bag, meant to hedge as many bets as possible. As the former teen idol promised, roughly a quarter of the disc draws from the low-down sound of hip hop’s dirty south. That may seem like an odd choice, given the style’s age. But the wily, 20-year-old star knows it’s still new to her audience, many of whom, like her, do not yet have the paperwork required to drink legally.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t redeem Miley entirely. In the best hip-hop track, “4 X 4,” she offers a guest shot from Nelly, who rides the beat with a musicality she can’t match. Whenever Miley goes for such raw sexual moments, it sounds nearly as forced as that MTV performance looked. She goes for fully earnest emotion in several ballads, including the promising “Adore You.” But at times it’s hard to determine her actual effect. There’s enough machinery tricking up her vocals to launch a mission to Mars.

Miley meets her match on that score in the by-the-numbers duet track with Britney Spears, “SMS/Bangerz.” They both sound bionic. (

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Perhaps the CD’s most left-field song — “FU” — luxuriates in solid retro-pop, referencing the tragic grandeur of Dusty Springfield. In songs like this, you can hear the richer qualities in Miley’s voice that might be nurtured in a less cynical project.
In places the star shows some genuine country honk. She sounds even better in “Get It Right,” a flowing piece of funk. Passages like this suggest Miley could have come up with a CD that has more of the musicality favored by peers like Ariana Grande or Demi Lovato.
But, it seems, she has already chosen her road — and it’s one geared more to provoke than to move.

USA TODAY

2 out of 4

Quote:

People get the pop stars they deserve.

It surely doesn't matter to many of the gawkers who have followed former tween idol Miley Cyrus' every calculatedly provocative move that her latest album, Bangerz (** out of four), now streaming at iTunes ahead of Oct. 8's official release, is exactly what they should have expected: a collection of competent, mostly generic tunes that juggle self-conscious sass with glimmers of earnestness.

Teaming with assorted name collaborators (Cyrus and Mike Will are co-executive producers), Cyrus provides celebrity watchers plenty to sustain her ubiquity. Was the spacious but lush Adore You written for Liam Hemsworth before they broke up? Is the darker FU, featuring French Montana, one of several electro-savvy tracks that flirt with industrial textures, a shot at her former fiancé? Fans and haters, debate!

"I'm a female rebel," Cyrus declares on the thumping 4x4 (featuring Nelly); she plays the good-girl-turned-wild-child on various other tracks, from the thumping Do My Thang to SMS (Bangerz), which finds her talking dirty with another former child star, Britney Spears.

But on the more reflective Someone Else, Cyrus sings, "I'm hurting myself/ I've turned into someone else." And on the spare, pulsing My Darlin' (with Future), the 20-year-old who has spent her youth in the spotlight — enabled by her parents and an increasingly prurient media — sees "the shadow of a broken-hearted girl" in a puddle.

After all this time, crying in public may come naturally to Cyrus. But in its predictable mediocrity, Bangerz gives her, and her followers, nothing to feel bad about.

Bad Influence

the impact of bionic tho.

Rainsford

messss

Monster

Can't wait to read more reviews.

FlyOnTheWall

the biased reviews tho

SylMacPer

Im still buying this tho

Samuel

It is a bit of a disjointed mess though

Lover

lemme get the standard, deluxe and itunes version to check if the critics have a point.

RudeBoy™

drag it.

FatShady

I may hate on someone but I never hate on music. This album had maybe 3 ok songs (WB included) and one good song (WCS).

Kh-Loud

I mean I would be more surprised if the album wasn't panned.

Phoenixstar

I personally gave this album 3 stars out of 5.

Rick

They DRAGGED !

Monster

It's sad when the singles are the only good songs on the album by a margin.

YoYo

Quote:

Originally posted by FlyOnTheWall

the biased reviews tho

biased?

Quote:

Originally posted by FatShady

I may hate on someone but I never hate on music. This album had maybe 3 ok songs (WB included) and one good song (WCS).

I only liked F U + Adore You (+WB ofc). The rest is TRASH.

Queen Bea.

All the reviewers had been geared up to write a bad review before they even heard it, it goes with the territory she is in right now but in my opinion is is a solid pop album, one of the best released in a long time and I for one am glad she didn't go down the Ariana or Demi route because she has given us something fresher and something individual to her. I think it'll be raked critically but will be a massive commercial success launching Miley into a global popstar to be ranked with Katy, Rihanna, Gaga etc. as one of the worlds biggest.

Whore of Babylon

Quote:

Originally posted by FlyOnTheWall

the biased reviews tho

And what makes you think they're biased?

holyground

I hope it gets at least a 60 on metacritic.

FlyOnTheWall

Quote:

Originally posted by ***** of Babylon

And what makes you think they're biased?

Biased because they clearly give it just bad reviews because of her image/scandals/persona/whatever. If that album came from Gaga or whoever it would be praised to high heavens...

cheers09

i'm getting TD reviews teas from this. lol