Miley Cyrus—Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz

Miley Cyrus—Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz

Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz—Is there redemption for teen idols? History has shown that corporate singers can go on to lead distinguished careers, like Scott Walker, though the very definition of a teen idol has changed dramatically since Walker's '60s. Miley Cyrus followed in a long line of Disney starlets-turned-pop singers from Britney Spears to Demi Lovato, though Cyrus was distinguished from the rest by coming from a family with actual musical heritage, however dubious: father Billy Ray Cyrus scored a #4 hit in 1992 with the reviled "Achy Breaky Heart" and followed it with a string of other country hits. Unlike Miley and her ilk, Billy Ray was a musician first and an actor second, whereas the Disney stars were bred to be general performers: act until you're not cute anymore, then pick up a microphone and start wearing less clothing.

It's a formula that's worked for a long line of starlets, and Miley Cyrus is no exception. After her Disney series Hannah Montana ended in 2011, her image began to change when the media took hold of non-events like Cyrus' remarking on her mild drug use or her twerking of Robin Thicke at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. The latter event helped generate notoriety for Bangerz, her first album for RCA, which was met with halfhearted reviews and platinum sales. As Cyrus embarked on the album's supporting tour, she seemed destined for years of pop banality when early in 2014, a strange thing happened:

happy birthday to one of my favorite artists OF alllllll time @waynecoyne 🔥👄🎉🎈🌀🌈

— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) January 13, 2014

A mainstream pop artist expressing admiration for an established rock act is nothing extraordinary in and of itself, but fans of the Flaming Lips would begin to look on in amazement as Cyrus and Wayne Coyne developed an actual friendship in the ensuing months. Coyne joined Cyrus on stage in Februrary for a performance of the Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" and in March began to post photos of his band and Cyrus in the recording studio together.

The prospect of Cyrus and the Flaming Lips recording together was hard to swallow for most onlookers. Fans of Cyrus were generally unfamiliar with the Lips, and fans of the Lips did not care about or were skeptical of what Cyrus could bring to the mix. The collaborative sessions appeared to be unfocused and under no specific timetable, so for most of 2014 the only things that came of it were Cyrus' and Coyne's matching tattoos and a bizarre music video titled "Blonde SuperFreak Steals the Magic Brain." The Flaming Lips released With a Little Help from My Fwends in October, a song-for-song remake of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which featured Cyrus on the acid-washed renditions of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life," among many other artists.

The 22-year-old Cyrus and 54-year-old Coyne continued their platonic cavorting for nearly a year with no new material between the two and only some Instagram snippets to show for their work together. The prospective album seemed like a pipe dream until the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, almost two years to the day after her twerking occurrence, when the two performed a new song, "Dooo It!" before Cyrus announced the independent release of Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, free to stream on her website through the music service SoundCloud effective immediately. Cyrus and her cohorts sing, "Yeah I smoke pot/Yeah I love peace/But I don't give a fuck/I ain't no hippie." The vapid nature of the opening song is a clear attempt by Cyrus to alienate her existing audience, concluding with the puzzling lines, "Why they put the dick in the pussy/Fuck you." Wayne Coyne, his nephew Dennis of Stardeath and White Dwarfs, and Steven Drozd all share writing credits on it and variously on most other songs on the 92-minute album.

The pretty "Karen Don't Be Sad" is a resurrected Flaming Lips outtake from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which explains the overarching similarities to that album's title piece, especially lines like "You know you're only letting 'em win," mirroring the battle between Yoshimi and the evil robots, but spun like an anti-bullying message. "The Floyd Song (Sunrise)" is a tribute to Cyrus' dog, whose death was the impetus for Coyne and Cyrus to get the aforementioned With a Little Help from My Fwends tattoos. The acoustic "Something about Space Dude" and its Oren Yoel-produced counterpart "Space Boots" as a pair blur the line between her experimental songs and her radio-ready material. Therein lies the genius of the album: by sequencing it like a jukebox from the nether, the group has made a grotesque pastiche of all the parts of Cyrus' personality, as it devolves into the cacophonous "Fuckin Fucked Up," back up into the spoken-word shuffle of "BB Talk," and into the Mike Will Made It-produced ballad "Fweaky" and wanton "Bang Me Box."

"Milky Milky Milk" opens up a new Lips suite, building around a sample of "Try to Explain" from The Terror with lines like "Your lips get me so wet/While I'm singing all the verses from the Tibetan Book of Dead." On "Slab of Butter (Scorpion)," it's amusing to see that after branding each of the songs he worked on in narcissistic fashion, Mike Will Made It is now associated with a song whose chorus is, "I feel like a slab of butter that is melting in the sun." "I Forgive Yiew" is pure pop, while the lovely "I Get So Scared" touches on indie guitar pop, "Lighter" a sort of mellower new wave. "Tangerine" mixes Lips spaceship imagery with a disaffected post-party passage by Big Sean; "Tiger Dreams," featuring Ariel Pink, is a despondent number about the futility of the world.

"Evil Is a Shadow" is a highlight, sounding as if it could slot perfectly anywhere on At War with the Mystics or Embryonic. "Cyrus Skies" apotheosizes the broadening of the mind: "Yeah I've been alive/But I've been a liar/There's some kind of love/That's so much higher." "1 Sun" is performed and mixed in the vein of Lady Gaga with Cyrus referencing artistic predecessor (to both) Grace Jones. "Miley Tibetan Bowlzzz" sees Cyrus' chants echoing over Drozd's new age synthesizer, while the tragicomical "Pablow the Blowfish" continues the theme of Cyrus' unfortunate run of titular pets. The album then ends with the personal triumph of "Twinkle Song," where Cyrus sings, "I had a dream/David Bowie ... was shaped like Gumby."

Speaking of Miley Cyrus' musical merit, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz would likely not be as good as it is without the involvement of the Flaming Lips. It's tempting to say that her input is secondary to what was accomplished around her, but it's pleasing to see that she's willing to go in a more challenging musical direction, even if there are some failed experiments like "BB Talk" and forgettable drek like "Bang Me Box." That is to be expected, however, especially on a 23-track album, and there are certainly more hits than misses. The unlikely friendship finally bearing fruit, Petz bodes well for Cyrus as an artist and is simultaneously a pleasant entry in the eclectic career of the Flaming Lips.