I think I ran out of time to waste on Miley Cyrus when she stereotyped rap music as too vulgar and material, like she didn’t exploit the ever-loving fuck out of it on her chart-topping 2013 LP, Bangerz. Her Flaming Lips collaboration would have been enough for me to denounce the Lips entirely, had they not made The Soft Bulletin. I could offer nothing more than a “meh” by the time her country-tinged 2017 album Younger Now rolled around.
Needless to say, my expectations for Miley Cyrus’ new EP, She Is Coming, could not have been lower. And yet I feel nothing but pure disappointment.
These six songs are a directionless, scattershot attempt at pleasing everyone, while managing to please no one. “The Most” seems like a branch thrown to fans who liked her last album, and even then, it’s forgettable at best. Even if Swae Lee isn’t trying on the decent Mike-WiLL beat on “Party In The Street,” he delivers a more convincing performance than Cyrus does. Tacked onto the tail end of “D.R.E.A.M.,” a disposable 20-second verse from Wu-Tang’s own Ghostface Killah is the laziest cut and paste job you’ll hear this decade.
You’ll be shocked to hear that the songwriting leaves something to be desired. A direct quote from “Mother’s Daughter” reads, “Hallelujah, I’m a witch, I’m a witch, hallelujah,” which somehow manages not to be the biggest lyrical clunker on the 19-minute project. That honor instead goes to “I love my pussy, that means I got cattitude,” a lyric so aggravatingly bad that I let out an audible groan after hearing it.
Through the entirety of the EP, it’s like Cyrus is flying on autopilot, armed with a fatal lack of self-awareness and stuck in an artistic hole that keeps getting deeper. It may be called She is Coming, but I really wish she’d just go away. And yeah, maybe that ending sounds like a lazy, canned effort at music criticism. But in that sense, it’s just like the EP itself.
Score: 😾/5
Raghav is a high school student in Ohio who loves music and writing about it. He also writes music reviews on his Instagram account. Has a soft spot for anything touched by Dan Bejar.