Miley Cyrus announced Tuesday that her tenth studio album, Bass Persuades, will be released September 18 on Atlantic Records, with two Hollywood Bowl dates on October 16 and 18. [1] Variety confirmed she has signed with Atlantic after two albums on Columbia, including Endless Summer Vacation and the Grammy-winning "Flowers," a fact the trade paper reported as a separate signing before Tuesday's album drop. [1] She appears to have dropped her last name for this cycle. A press release refers to her as Miley. [1] On Sunday she bought a wrap-around cover of the Los Angeles Times that showed her face and first name only, and she updated her website with the same image. [1]
The announcement is being sold as a homecoming. "It's been a while," she wrote on Instagram. "The Hollywood Bowl is my favorite place to experience music and see my favorite artists. I've sat in those seats many times, but I've never taken the stage. LA is my heart and I'm bringing it home." [1] Model/Actriz is billed as a special guest. [1] The Instagram copy reads as if she will play the new album in full. [1] Spotify posted a ten-track list that opens and closes on the title, with "Different Religion" featuring Model/Actriz, "Neon Signs" featuring Andrew Wyatt of Miike Snow, and interior cuts including "Let's Get Married," "Orbit," "Aftermath," "Redlights," "Innocent Ways," and "Snow." [1]
In the Instagram mission statement that accompanied the album, she wrote, "Music takes hold of us. We feel it, sing it, sometimes dance to it, let it out and carry on." [1] "That's what the title means to me." [1] Variety recently confirmed the Atlantic signing. [1] She told Wonderland, in a conversation Variety excerpted, that a song is "a feeling" and that she likes rooms with "no ego" when a record is working. [1] None of that is the ticket story.
The money is in who gets in before the public. An Amex presale opens September 8 at 10 a.m. Pacific. Cyrus's own presale begins September 9 at 10 a.m. [1] Spotify will run a Reserved option in which top fans have tickets set aside before they go on sale to everyone else. [1] General onsale is September 10 at 10 a.m. [1] That is not a concert listing. It is a ranking of credit cards, a fan-club list, and a streaming-subscription tier, in that order, after a label change.
Atlantic is the new landlord. Columbia had the last two records. Reserved tickets are Spotify's way of converting a listening habit into a gate. The people who hear Bass Persuades on Friday the 18th will not all sit in those seats a month later. The ones who do will have been sorted by Amex, by the artist's own list, and by a platform that already knows who streams her. X is cheering the mononym. The allocation is the story the announcement buries under the Bowl dates.
-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles