2015 studio album by Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus. It was surprise released independently to SoundCloud on August 30, 2015, and later released commercially to digital music stores and music streaming services by RCA Records on April 10, 2017. Cyrus began planning this fifth album before releasing her fourth album "Bangerz" (2013), and befriended the Flaming Lips while she continued working on the album in 2014. In addition to the psychedelic rock band, Cyrus worked with producers Mike Will Made It and Oren Yoel (with whom she had collaborated on "Bangerz"). The album features guest vocals by Big Sean (who had appeared on "Bangerz"), Sarah Barthel of Phantogram and Ariel Pink.
Without previous promotion, Cyrus announced that "Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz" was available for free online streaming when she hosted the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, released independently. Critics were divided in their opinions of the album; some applauded Cyrus' ambition and experimentation, and others considered its production and overall finish lacking. Cyrus promoted the album with music videos for "Dooo It!", "Lighter" and "BB Talk", and performances of "Karen Don't Be Sad" and "Twinkle Song" when she hosted "Saturday Night Live". Additionally, she embarked on her fifth and short concert tour, the Milky Milky Milk Tour between November and December 2015.
Background and production.
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 On my last record, everything we did was with computers. But [the Flaming Lips are] real musicians – they can change keys on a whim. I've never seen anything like it. They've had me on this journey that's greater than anything I've been on. It's really deep.
— Cyrus, describing her artistic transition during the album's production
On October 4, 2013, after the release of "Bangerz", Cyrus announced that she was working on a follow-up album. She said, "I'm already at a different time than I was when I finished ["Bangerz"]" and was so removed from daily life because of her career that "I need something to work for". In an interview to "The New York Times", Cyrus explained the personal evolution, including death and love as she'd never known, that led to this project. First came the killing in April 2014 of her beloved dog, Floyd, by coyotes while she was touring for "Bangerz". Two weeks later, after bawling through some performances, Cyrus was hospitalized for more than a week in Kansas with a severe allergic reaction to antibiotics. There she was visited by Wayne Coyne, long one of her musical heroes, with whom she had recently begun collaborating.
Cyrus befriended Coyne and his band, the Flaming Lips; they joined her for performances during her Bangerz Tour, and Cyrus recorded cover versions of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life" for the Flaming Lips' 2014 fifteenth studio album "With a Little Help from My Fwends". Fascinated by their live instrumentation and its contrast with "Bangerz"' computerized elements, Cyrus began writing material with the Flaming Lips for her then-untitled fifth studio album in May 2014 and expected to finish it after the Bangerz Tour later that year. Producer Mike Will Made It, who collaborated with Cyrus on "Bangerz", hinted in July that they were working on a new project and said in December that they had recorded six unfinished tracks for her record. That year, Cyrus severed creative ties with producer Dr. Luke to pursue a "different direction musically", and punk rock singer Kathleen Hanna offered to help her with a record "only [Cyrus is] daring enough to make".
Composition.
Music genres.
In its early conceptual stages, Cyrus called "Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz" "a little psychedelic, but still in that pop world". Mike Will Made It described it as "like country Lana Del Rey backed by a choir, except it's Miley pouring her heart out". The album is experimental, psychedelic, psychedelic pop, and psychedelic rock with elements of alternative pop, synth-pop, art pop, and space rock.
Songs and lyrical content.
The first half of "Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz" has "a healthy dose of the [Flaming Lips]' warm guitars and uniquely unsettling approach to melody"; in its second half, the band's "organic approach" is integrated with the "throbbing computer [pop]" of Mike Will Made It's production. Jason Lipshutz of "Billboard" interpreted the album's drug and sexual references as Cyrus' way of "addressing the parents put off by her twerk-happy antics during her "Bangerz" run: You ain't seen nothin' yet!" "Dooo It!" incorporates elements of hip hop and trap music as Cyrus sings, "Yeah, I smoke pot / yeah, I love peace / but I don't give a fuck / I ain't no hippie" in a style called reminiscent of "M.I.A.'s abrasive bravado". "Karen Don't Be Sad" is a "hazy ballad" that has been described as a "lost track from "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots"." "The Floyd Song (Sunrise)" was written after the April 2014 death of Cyrus' dog, Floyd, while she was on the Bangerz Tour. The combination of "acoustic guitar, zapping electronics and warm synth pads" has been said to make Cyrus' vocals sound like she is "fronting a Flaming Lips cover band".
Like "Karen Don't Be Sad", the acoustic "Something About Space Dude" has been compared to material from the Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" (2002). In "Space Bootz", Cyrus expresses affection for a love interest who is "emotionally unavailable", with a more "cosmic-pop" production and "interstellar whooshes and synths" than the lyrically similar "Something About Space Dude". "Fuckin Fucked Up" is a witch house-inspired interlude before "BB Talk"; in "BB Talk" Cyrus expresses distaste for public displays of affection from a love interest and a desire for him to "fuck [her] so [he stops] baby talking." The "swaying, stoney, piano-based" "Fweaky" describes a sexual encounter after drinking and using drugs. "Bang Me Box", a "raunchy electro R&amp;B" song, expresses an explicit desire for lesbian sex.
Cyrus sings the tenth song, "Milky Milky Milk", in a "robotic" voice over a "wiggy synth" beat. It shares the lyrics "I feel like a slab of butter / that is melting in the sun / oppression melts away / now that you and me are one" with the next track, "Slab of Butter (Scorpion)", which features Sarah Barthel of Phantogram. The "'80s robo-funk" interlude "I'm So Drunk" precedes "I Forgive Yiew", with its elements of "cartoonish funk-hop." "I Get So Scared" is a "soulful" number about moving on from a former love interest, and "Lighter" combines a Cyndi Lauper-esque vocal style with "percolating '80s pop" experimentation. "Tangerine" is a "spacey, acid dipped slow burner", with a verse by rapper Big Sean in the middle, followed by the chime-heavy "Tiger Dreams" with Ariel Pink as a background vocalist. The eighteenth track, "Evil Is But a Shadow", was compared to Portishead; when heard with "Tangerine" and "Tiger Dreams", it has "druggy" and "hypnotic" elements.
In "Cyrus Skies", Cyrus sings "I’ve been alive but I’ve been a liar" in an exaggerated manner over an "opulent pop" beat that "comes off like a horror movie Lana Del Rey." "1 Sun" has been called a "Lady Gaga-Sky Ferreira hybrid" with an "industrial-electro-tinged" production and environmentally-conscious lyrics reminiscent of "Wake Up America" from Cyrus' second studio album, "Breakout" (2008). According to Cyrus, she "passive aggressively" included "Miley Tibetan Bowlzzz" on the album as a demonstration of artistic control and independence when her team expressed concern that the album might be "too long". Her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, recorded her playing the Tibetan bowls; she "[wanted] people to listen all the way through just once, because it’s a nice story". "Pablow the Blowfish" is a piano-based ballad addressing Cyrus' grief for her pet fish, with "silly" and "endearing" lyrics (including "watching my friends eat my friends ruined my appetite", referring to a sushi outing). "Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz" closes with "Twinkle Song", inspired by the death of her friend's cat; Cyrus' vocal begins in a "controlled country-ballad voice" which becomes "powerful yelling."
Release.
At the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards, Cyrus said that "Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz" (untitled at the time) "might take me five years" to finish: "I'll just work on it until I'm done". According to the singer, the album is "about music [and is] not about twerking". In January 2015, Cyrus expressed her intention "to get this stuff out ASAP", adding that she was working on the album nearly every day. Although "Bangerz" cost "a couple million" dollars to produce, "Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz" cost about $50,000; she said that RCA Records, her label, did not hear the final product until she completed it. The album does not count towards her multi-album recording contract with the label, but RCA said: "Miley Cyrus continues to be a groundbreaking artist. She has a strong point of view regarding her art and expressed her desire to share this body of work with her fans directly. RCA Records is pleased to support Miley's unique musical vision".
Cyrus mentioned that the possibility of a free album in an August 2015 "Marie Claire" interview, with her manager adding that the singer was "prepared to buy herself out of the label" if RCA Records did not cooperate with her plan. That month, Cyrus was reportedly working on two albums simultaneously and considered releasing her project with the Flaming Lips for free. On the red carpet for the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards on August 30 (which she hosted), she said: "It's been kind of the most magical week of my life ... It feels like Christmas". Cyrus closed the show with a previously unannounced performance of "Dooo It!" with Coyne, before telling the audience that "Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz" was available for free online streaming. Vinyl pressings of the record were announced in October 2015, but minimal were released. In April 2017, the album was officially uploaded to iTunes and paid music subscription services like Apple Music and Spotify, after only being available for free on SoundCloud for almost 2 years.
Reaction.
Dan Weiss of "Spin" found that the most interesting aspect of "Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz" was RCA Records' willingness to let Cyrus release the material outside her recording contract: "Before the era of the surprise free album, record companies would refuse to release an uncommercial record, or let it choke to death without promotion". According to Weiss, the label supported Cyrus' launch strategy when it determined that none of the material "was worth fighting Big Miley LLC over". Chris DeVille of "Stereogum" said, "After a second straight year dotted by surprise drops by everyone from Drake to Death Grips to Miley Cyrus and the Flaming Lips" (after Beyoncé's self-titled fifth studio album in 2013), the practice ran the risk of becoming "standard". DeVille questioned the accuracy of the word "surprise", when the projects' existence had been extensively discussed by the media before their release.
Joe Coscarelli wrote for "The New York Times" that, given the success and duration of her career, Cyrus earned the privilege of "[debuting] a different, decidedly noncommercial version of herself" and her "performative, post-Disney, anything-goes ethos is more than a retail strategy – it's her all-encompassing aesthetic and lifestyle". Coscarelli also stated that "whereas "Bangerz" saw a freshly unfettered pop renegade experimenting with her newfound power — roiling some with its hip-hop tourism and provocative visuals — the id-heavy experiments of "Dead Petz" reveal Miley as she exists now: aware of her position as a youth-culture spokeswoman, and openly keen on drugs, sex, animals and the environment". John Mayer called the album "a masterwork of whack genius" on Twitter, praising Cyrus' demonstration that "you can be one artist one year and the next discover some crazy light inside yourself and shine it everywhere". Elton John commended the singer for her unorthodox collaboration with the Flaming Lips, which he called the "spur of the moment, out of leftfield stuff ... that would have happened during the '60s". Father John Misty's J. Tillman placed the album tenth on his list of ten favorite albums of 2015.
Promotion.
Before the announcement of "Miley Cyrus &amp; Her Dead Petz", Cyrus sang "Twinkle Song" at Art Basel in Miami Beach, Florida on December 7, 2014. She and the Flaming Lips introduced "Tiger Dreams" during the Adult Swim upfront party at Terminal 5 in New York City