Bass Persuades: Miley drops the surname and picks up a band
Her tenth album and her first as just Miley, with Model/Actriz and Andrew Wyatt on the credits. Fast, crowded, and strongest in the middle.
BY JOLT Staff · SEP 18 2026 · 4 min readBass Persuades is Miley Cyrus' tenth album, the first with the surname gone, and the shorter name fits. Eleven tracks, two billed features, and a middle run that is the most interesting music she has put her name to in years.
She has been working since she was a Disney teenager. Hannah Montana made her a teen idol, and the records after it moved fast: the pop rock of Meet Miley Cyrus and Breakout, the turn into Bangerz and "Wrecking Ball", then the detours through Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, Younger Now and Plastic Hearts. After signing to Columbia she released Endless Summer Vacation in 2023, which carried "Flowers", the best-selling single of that year and a Record of the Year Grammy. The visual album Something Beautiful, her ninth, came next. Bass Persuades is the first of them without the surname on it.
“This album happened fast but that’s been my life for 20 years. Once I started wishing to land a role that would make LA my home it’s been nonstop. This album is a reflection of everywhere I’ve been along the way and the peace that came with starting to slow it all down. Thank you for celebrating this release with me. It’s a special record and it’s bliss to share with you.”
She signed to Atlantic in July 2026, leaving Columbia, and announced the album on September 1 with a title she explained as covering "heart full, heartache, every part of life in between". Cyrus has said she had already chosen the songs and put them in order on a private playlist, a habit she traces to impatience with long album rollouts. It was made with Kid Harpoon, her long-time collaborator, and Maxx Morando, her fiancé, both credited as producers across most of the record alongside Michael Pollack and Monsterz & Strangerz. Cyrus has said the album happened fast, and the schedule agrees: the title track came out as a single with a video on September 3, "Let's Get Married" got a video on September 17, and the album landed on September 18.
The personnel sheets put bass and electric guitar at the front of nearly every song, with synthesizers, programming and drum programming behind them, and Ruben Radlauer of Model/Actriz playing live drums wherever the band is involved. James King's saxophone turns up on the title track. Davide Rossi arranged strings for "REDLIGHTS". The record switches between machines and players across all eleven songs. This is a pop album that keeps letting a band get its hands on it.
The title track opens with that saxophone and a credit list that puts Cyrus, Kid Harpoon, Pollack and Morando in the same room, which is most of the record's cast in one place. "Different Religion" is the one to play first: Model/Actriz are billed as featured vocalists, Cole Haden shares the writing credit with Cyrus and four members of the band, and Radlauer's drums, Jack Wetmore's electric guitar and Aaron Shapiro's bass and programming all stay on the track after the feature ends. "Let's Get Married" carries the record's most conventional sheet, with acoustic guitar and piano from Kid Harpoon and electrics from Monsterz & Strangerz, and it is the one most likely to get played at an actual wedding, which is presumably the point. "Orbit" has the strangest sheet on the album: harp from Sara Kawai, mellotron, wurlitzer, dulcimer guitar, and Model/Actriz credited for additional production.
"Aftermath" brings in Wayne Coyne on additional vocals and gives the drums back to Radlauer, with Kid Harpoon and Morando splitting the synth and programming. "REDLIGHTS" is the one Cyrus wrote with Pollack alone, and it carries the strings. "Neon Signs" hands Andrew Wyatt a share of the lead vocal and a farfisa organ, the oddest pairing on the record. "Snow" pulls Model/Actriz back into the writing credits with Cyrus, Harpoon and Pollack. "Innocent Ways" has the smallest sheet here, written by Cyrus and Morando with nobody else, produced by the two of them with Kid Harpoon. Then a remix of track one, and a 31-second closer called "MILEY".
This is for people who took the guitars on Plastic Hearts over the ballads on Endless Summer Vacation, and for anyone curious about what a noise band does when it gets near a chorus. If you came for "Flowers", there are two or three songs here for you and you will skip the rest.
The flaw is placement. Track ten is a remix of track one, credited to Model/Actriz, and it breaks the only run on the album that was building toward something, so the record ends on "MILEY" as an afterthought. The producer list is the other problem: when Cyrus, Kid Harpoon, Pollack, Morando and Monsterz & Strangerz all touch one song, no single fingerprint is the story anymore.
Three and a half. The middle of Bass Persuades is good enough to carry both ends, and the features do real work. Nothing here reads as filler until the penultimate slot. Two nights at the Hollywood Bowl on October 16 and 18 will show whether the guitars survive outside the studio.
