On Thursday, the third date of the tour, fans arriving at Honda Center were greeted with religious protesters holding signs with Bible verses and one that read, “The Teachings of Smiley Virus Will Wreck Your Life.” A moment on the earlier dates featuring Cyrus “Lewinsky-ing” a dancer with a Bill Clinton mask, wasn’t featured in Anaheim, perhaps due to reports that the controversy had softened the demand for tickets. Cyrus has long drawn comparisons to her godmother Dolly Parton’s voice - see her instant-classic rendition of “Jolene” - but here, she’s finally achieved the Tennessee queen’s knack for telling a vivid story.Miley Cyrus Has No Desire to Tour Again, Says Singing for Thousands "Isn't Really the Thing That I Love" folktale imagery in a double ode to Johnny Cash, she ties the very literal fire that burnt her house down in 2018 and forced her to start anew with the creative flame that rages inside her to this day. On “Never Be Me” and “Golden G String,” the two stadium-sized anthems that close out the record, Cyrus meditates on the perils of fame and the hypocrisy of the industry with L.A. “Put you on a pedestal, you’re craving the spotlight/Desperate for attention, nose is bloody, it’s daylight,” she growls on “WTF Do I Know,” one of several not-so-joyous joyrides past parties that go on too late and illicit affairs at the Chateau Marmont. But the Nashville influence is apparent in more substantial ways, particularly in Cyrus’ songwriting on a whirlwind life of fame, drugs, and heartbreak. She wears the desperado hat well on “High,” a lovesick crooner that, much like recent country-pop efforts from Halsey and the Chicks, weaves lap steel among slick guitars and drum machines. This is a post-divorce record, after all, and the only genre that Cyrus arguably does better than New Wave rock is classic country balladry. Unlike her previous album Younger Now, where Cyrus dabbled in a rootsier sound without much substance, she actually has a lot to say on Plastic Hearts.
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You may call it shameless, but Cyrus knows exactly what kind of leather-jacket-and-combat-boot show she’s putting on here, and her full embrace of rock at its most bombastic, artificial, hair-metal glory is refreshing to say the least. But even she’s not afraid to cop to her influences: The album’s lead single, “ Midnight Sky,” earned so many comparisons to “Edge of Seventeen” that Cyrus decided to double down and release an official mash-up remix, with Stevie Nicks herself in tow. Tying it all together is Cyrus, whose full-throated vocals turn the whole album into an instant karaoke go-to. There’s creeping Nine Inch Nails industrial rock on “Gimme What I Want” and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road -era Elton John on the passionate “Angels Like You.” If you listen closely (or not), the opening on the title track is a dead ringer for those “Sympathy for the Devil” bongo drums. Listening through Plastic Hearts is like bar-hopping along the Sunset Strip - if the Sunset Strip somehow played host to the biggest rock acts of the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties on a single Friday night, and they were all fronted by Axl Rose. Still, if what you want is an homage, you won’t find a better one than here. (It doesn’t help that the highlights from this album’s rollout haven’t been the album tracks themselves, but rather Cyrus’ live covers of more well-known rock classics like “ Maneater” and “ Heart of Glass.”)
Few other celebrities have put their misguided attempts at an image makeover on full display as Cyrus has, and after back-to-back eras as a twerking shock jock and a Flaming Lips psych-pop princess, the sweeping rock homage of Plastic Hearts initially comes across as playing it safe. That Cyrus has come back around to guitars and gravel-voiced hooks is poetic or highly convenient, depending on your view. More notably, “See You Again” was Cyrus at her most self-assured and in her element - a feeling she hasn’t been able to quite replicate until now, on her glam-rock throwback album Plastic Hearts.
And while it didn’t stray far from Disney Channel’s mass-produced pop, “See You Again” was still a mild surprise: it was cocky, clever, and a bit cooler than anyone really expected from the daughter of the “Achy Breaky Heart” guy. Thirteen years ago, a teenage Miley Cyrus released “See You Again,” a snarling dance-rock single and her first without the Hannah Montana moniker that made her famous.
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