You may call it shameless, but Cyrus knows exactly what kind of leather-jacket-and-combat-boot show she’s putting on here, and her full embrace of rock at its most bombastic, artificial, hair-metal glory is refreshing to say the least. But even she’s not afraid to cop to her influences: The album’s lead single, “ Midnight Sky,” earned so many comparisons to “Edge of Seventeen” that Cyrus decided to double down and release an official mash-up remix, with Stevie Nicks herself in tow. Tying it all together is Cyrus, whose full-throated vocals turn the whole album into an instant karaoke go-to. There’s creeping Nine Inch Nails industrial rock on “Gimme What I Want” and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road -era Elton John on the passionate “Angels Like You.” If you listen closely (or not), the opening on the title track is a dead ringer for those “Sympathy for the Devil” bongo drums. Listening through Plastic Hearts is like bar-hopping along the Sunset Strip - if the Sunset Strip somehow played host to the biggest rock acts of the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties on a single Friday night, and they were all fronted by Axl Rose. Still, if what you want is an homage, you won’t find a better one than here. (It doesn’t help that the highlights from this album’s rollout haven’t been the album tracks themselves, but rather Cyrus’ live covers of more well-known rock classics like “ Maneater” and “ Heart of Glass.”) Few other celebrities have put their misguided attempts at an image makeover on full display as Cyrus has, and after back-to-back eras as a twerking shock jock and a Flaming Lips psych-pop princess, the sweeping rock homage of Plastic Hearts initially comes across as playing it safe. That Cyrus has come back around to guitars and gravel-voiced hooks is poetic or highly convenient, depending on your view. More notably, “See You Again” was Cyrus at her most self-assured and in her element - a feeling she hasn’t been able to quite replicate until now, on her glam-rock throwback album Plastic Hearts. And while it didn’t stray far from Disney Channel’s mass-produced pop, “See You Again” was still a mild surprise: it was cocky, clever, and a bit cooler than anyone really expected from the daughter of the “Achy Breaky Heart” guy. Thirteen years ago, a teenage Miley Cyrus released “See You Again,” a snarling dance-rock single and her first without the Hannah Montana moniker that made her famous.
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