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There’s an ’80s nostalgia that hangs over Miley Cyrus‘s entire visual album for “Something Beautiful,” a 55-minute mashup of music videos that features windblown hair, showgirl dancing and slinky designer clothing (most of which were literal archives from the ’80s). But Cyrus says that she “was very protective of not having very many references.”
“I wanted to be the reference,” she told journalist Derek Blasberg at the premiere for “Something Beautiful” at Tribeca Film Festival on Friday night. “You can’t do something that no one’s ever done before with a bunch of other women on your wall.”
That said, she’s deeply aware of the string of female icons that came before her that made it possible for her to create the art she does now. “I completely worship and idolize the Tina Turners, the Donna Summers, Diana Ross and so many ladies before me that paved this path that I’m on. This is my journey but they made it so much easier because they’ve already broken down all the doors for me.”
The singer even enlisted one ’80s icon, Naomi Campbell, to feature on a song, “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved,” in which the British supermodel serves as a voguing hypewoman: “She never wears a watch, still she’s never late / She’s got that kind of grace / Did Botticelli paint her face? / She has the perfect face / She speaks the perfect French / She can dance the night away / And still she never breaks a scent.”
In the visual component for the song, which feels like the climax of the album, she and Campbell dance powerfully through an empty warehouse with light shooting through propeller fans.
“Force is the magical word here,” she jokes to Blasberg about how she enlisted Campbell. “If Naomi wants to do something, just like myself or any artist, they make it happen and they do it.”
Cyrus and Michael Pollack, a writer listed on every song on the album, wrote the verses for Campbell but she says it was them “channeling her.” “And she had no notes, which was pretty amazing,” she said. “I didn’t believe it when they said she already cut her verse. And it was better than I ever could’ve imagined.”
Cyrus did want the crowd to know that Campbell borrowed an archival Thierry Mugler for the video, adding that she has the largest loaned archive of Thierry Mugler in the world. The French fashion designer, who died in 2022, has been a longtime inspiration for the singer and his clothes are heavily featured in the film.
“I said I don’t share fashion with my friends unless they’re Naomi.”
“Something Beautiful: The Visual Album” arrives in June 12 in the US and June 27 internationally.
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