#BassPersuades is Miley Cyrus’s tenth studio album — released September 18, 2026 on Atlantic Records — her first project promoted under the mononym “Miley” and her first full-length dance-forward reinvention. Framed by Cyrus as a “love story” to her fiancé Maxx Morando that also explores self-love, the 11-track, ~38-minute record arrived with a Hollywood Bowl residency announcement and a title-track music video from director Bardia Zeinali, and drew mixed but engaged reviews that praised individual songs while faulting the album for cohesion.
Quick Facts
- Release date: September 18, 2026
- Label: Atlantic Records
- Studio album number: 10 (Miley Cyrus’s 10th)
- Runtime: ~38 minutes, 11 tracks
- Lead single: “Bass Persuades” (September 3, 2026)
- Notable collaborators: Model/Actriz, Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow)
- Live announcement: Hollywood Bowl shows announced alongside album
The Album
Bass Persuades is Cyrus’s first project explicitly promoted under the mononym “Miley,” which she adopted in an August 31, 2026 social-media post teasing the record. The title track, released September 3, previewed a rhythm-forward direction lighter on rock than her recent output. Two tracks that critics have singled out — “Aftermath,” with its cicada-like synths and driving beat, and “Orbit,” a Pink Floyd–styled psychedelic ballad — anchor the emotional core of the record. Cyrus has described the album as a multi-layered “love story” running through the tracklist, threaded with a “romantic thread” rooted in her relationship with Morando.
Guest contributions come from Brooklyn art-punk band Model/Actriz and from Andrew Wyatt of Miike Snow, whose fingerprints are audible on the album’s more textured production choices.
Critical Reception
Reviews were mixed. Variety’s review called Bass Persuades “pretty and passable, but surprisingly light on bass… or persuasion,” praising individual songs but arguing the album never fully lands the promise of its title. Slant’s review echoed the concern, writing that “aesthetic distinctiveness and thematic cohesiveness are the missing ingredients” and that the abrupt genre shifts prevent the record from cohering into a single vision. musicOMH, cited across the day-of coverage, described it as “as intriguing as it is muddled.”
Even critics who were lukewarm on the whole flagged “Aftermath” and “Orbit” as high points that showed what a more consistent version of the album could have looked like.
Cultural Impact
On Cyrus’s public identity. The rollout under “Miley” is the first time Cyrus has retired her surname on album art in more than a decade of full-length releases, and much of the launch coverage framed Bass Persuades as a marketing reinvention as much as a musical one — a bid to reset how she is positioned as a pop artist after 2023’s Endless Summer Vacation and 2025’s Something Beautiful.
On the dance-pop moment. The album is one of a cluster of 2026 releases in which established pop artists moved toward rhythmic, dance-floor–leaning production, and Variety’s own coverage of the music video for the title track cast Cyrus as “leading a dance revolution.” Whether it sustains that leadership claim remains a live debate in reviews.
Variations & Related Tags
- #Miley — the mononym rollout the album introduced
- #MileyCyrus — the artist’s long-running tag
- #Orbit / #Aftermath — the two most-flagged critical highlights
- #HollywoodBowl — the tied live-show announcement
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Persuades
- https://variety.com/2026/music/news/miley-cyrus-new-album-bass-persuades-hollywood-bowl-1236847024/
- https://variety.com/2026/music/news/miley-bass-persuades-album-review-1236868564/
- https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/miley-bass-persuades-collaborators-key-tracks-takeaways-1235626466/
- https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/miley-cyrus-bass-persuades-album-review/
- https://variety.com/2026/music/news/miley-cyrus-steamy-dance-floor-bass-persuades-music-video-1236851134/