Only a year after ‘Something Beautiful’, Miley returns without a last name and with a pop sound inspired by the late 2000s. ‘Bass Persuades’ seemed to anticipate a guitar sound, but actually offers a return to the imperial pop of Lady Gaga and Miley herself in the ‘Can’t Be Tamed’ era, a song that is reminiscent of the first synth chords.
The music “persuades” is the concept of this song with echoes of dance-pop, electropop and a little electroclash, with a very European melody and questionable mastering that could be deliberate, and which, like ‘Flowers’ and ‘End of the World’, serves nostalgia and immediate pop. The chorus “kids don’t want to dance” would allude to today’s youth distracted by social networks and the song is an invitation to live the moment with other human beings.
The song’s references, transmitted in spoken word, reinforce precisely this vindication of analog in the face of today’s hyperconnection: from the phone screen and nostalgia for the time when you had to wait for MTV to discover a hit, to the invitation to “go analog” and look out the window instead of staying glued to your cell phone.
Without this time serving especially as a vehicle for her marvelous voice, ‘Bass Persuades’ reminds us that enough time has passed to reference the 2000s, as Gaga did in ‘Abracadabra’ last year. Above all, Gaga also remembers the outfits and choreographies of the video clip.
Charging …