Breakout

The Age

Thursday September 11, 2008

Andrew Murfett

Breakout

Miley Cyrus

Hollywood Records/EMI

3/5

Teenage girls need music, too. With the usual suspects absent (or absent minded) it's been left to a handful of American teenagers to deliver the year's biggest pop albums. Take recent Rolling Stone magazine cover stars the Jonas Brothers. Or, indeed, Miley Cyrus. Boasting an incandescent real name (Destiny Hope Cyrus), she is the daughter of Billy Ray Achy Breaky Heart Cyrus and a $1billion asset to the Disney corporation. After a string of tween TV hits, she is also now a pop star. And a massively successful one at that. When Breakout arrived in US stores, it took a month to sell 800,000 copies. The album was released locally last week. Musically, as far as teen-pop goes, it's not horrible. Cyrus has a solid voice and her people have chosen their producers (from No Doubt and Blink 182) deftly. It's the kind of angsty guitar-heavy pop Kelly Clarkson's label wish she would release. Cyrus co-wrote eight of the 13 tracks here and there's some candid, and perhaps ill-advised, lyrical innuendo. A rebellious side is frequently (and not so subtly) hinted at. Tellingly, her cover of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun may say more about this

over-worked 15-year-old's current state of mind than she intended. -- ANDREW MURFETT

© 2008 The Age

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