The real story with Endless Summer Vacation might be that this is the album where pop’s forever fickle princess finally finds her sound. In truth, she kind of already did on 2017’s fantastic Younger Now, but either the tepid commercial and critical response or commitment to a holistic roots music out-of-step with her more radical impulses soon sent Miley careening in other different directions, first with a 2019 EP of resolutely contemporary hip-hop bangers, dance floor fillers, and power ballads (part of a subsequently aborted trilogy), and then with the classic rock pastiche of 2020’s Plastic Hearts, which wore its retrofetishism so transparently that Billy Idol, Joan Jett, and Stevie Nicks showed up for features. Miley has tended to have trouble getting all the constituent parts of her massive talent moving in concert, and while Plastic Hearts boasts some of the most accomplished and consistent writing on any of her albums (with pop fixers Andrew Watt, Mark Ronson, Ryan Tedder, Louis Bell, and Emile Haynie all in the credits), it’s also the least sonically adventurous effort since her Disney Channel days.
Published as part of InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 11.
