Bass Persuades Review

Bass Persuades is Miley Cyrus's first album for Atlantic after leaving Columbia, released on September 18, 2026: ten songs in about 38 minutes of electropop and pop rock, produced with her fiancé Maxx Morando, Kid Harpoon, Michael Pollack, Model/Actriz and others, with Wayne Coyne and Andrew Wyatt among the guests. She described it as a love story with a romantic thread about Morando and about self-love, and the title as covering heart full, heartache and everything in between. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 61,000 units, her sixth No. 1 there and her first since Bangerz in 2013.

The chart number outran the reviews. It sits at 63 on Metacritic from ten critics, and most notices were in the middle: three stars from AllMusic, NME and MusicOMH, which called it intriguing but muddled, a C plus from Paste and 5.3 from Pitchfork, against four stars from the Times and 7 from the Line of Best Fit. Slant found that it does not deliver on its title and that its theme and sound do not hang together, Variety called the title track's release a classic act of misdirection and found the record disappointing, Eulalie heard it as safer than Something Beautiful, and Still Listening called it inconsistent and rushed.

The production is polished and the title track is a strong single, which keeps production at a B. The love songs rarely say anything specific and the record swerves between styles without committing to one, so lyrics and vibe sit at C, and it is a C.