March 12, Breakout by Miley Cyrus

Genre: Pop with country undertones
Year: 2008
Runtime: 39:45
Total tracks: 12 (nine original songs, two covers, and one remix of a song from a prior album).
Songs you might know:
– “7 Things”
– “Fly on the Wall”

My prior relationship with this album: The relationship I have with Disney Channel music made circa 2006-2010 is difficult to explain, but the recent JoBros reunion has inspired me to explore it. I enjoyed writing parody lyrics and listened to this album looking for material. (If you’re curious, “7 Things,” “Fly on the Wall,” and “Wake Up America” all got this treatment). I actually listened to this album fairly often after it came out, but certainly had a negative view of Miley/Hannah Montana/Disney in general so I never really gave it a fair shake. After all, I was one of the cool kids listening to Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy (LOL) so even if this album was good, I never would’ve admitted it at the time. It’s probably been at least a decade since I listened to the full album beginning to the end, so I thought it could be fun to see if a more rational, objective Anne would feel differently.

My impressions this time around: The real shame of Breakout is that a fair number of these songs could’ve been masterpieces had they not been performed by a 15-year-old Miley Cyrus. I mean sure, there’s some insufferable atrocities that could not be salvaged by anyone, such as “Wake Up America” and “Fly on the Wall,” but most of the other songs here had so much unfulfilled potential.

There’s two big problems going on here. For one, teenage Miley often didn’t have the vocal chops to bring the material to its full potential, as evident in songs like “The Driveway” which might’ve been quite good in the hands of Carrie Underwood or someone similar. Hell, I actually really like the arrangement for the cover of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” but unfortunately the production is wasted on vocals that sound like a teenager at their karaoke slumber party.

The other problem is that there’s a palpable emotional disconnect between Miley and the material she was given. Miley’s post-Disney shenanigans make it even more evident that Breakout is not an organic expression of an artist’s creative vision; it is a list of songs that Miley sang because a market research team at Disney determined these songs were most likely to appeal to her target audience. Yes, she does have writing credits on 8 out of 12 tracks, which is cool I guess especially given that two songs are covers. However, she was 15 and to deny the presence of the Disney machine helping her is naive. The title track “Breakout” is the worst offender, as it’s about teenagers bitching about school and dreaming about all the fun stuff they’ll do outside of school, like a rejected HSM2 song. You can tell this doesn’t reflect the actual challenges of being a Disney Channel superstar Miley was facing. The result is a song that just feels fake and overly juvenile.

YouTube autoplay decided to play Demi Lovato’s “Skyscraper” shortly after I finished this album, and that song perfectly encapsulates what this album was missing. You can feel that the person singing has actually lived through the struggles she’s singing about, and the only times that’s sorta kinda present on Breakout are “Simple Song” and “Goodbye.” These are probably the album’s two best tracks, but still could’ve been 10x better if performed by more experienced vocalists.

I also want to say that I hope Disney fired the person who decided to end this otherwise cohesive album with a Rock Mafia Remix of the Meet Miley Cyrus track “See You Again.” No one needed this. If anyone DID ask for this remix, it was a small child who should not have been taken seriously. The dark, mysterious, but still basic dance pop song doesn’t belong here the way that Peter Griffin doesn’t belong in an episode of Spongebob. It’s THAT bad, and the fact that any semi-serious Miley fan already had a different version of this song renders its presence completely unnecessary.

Who would enjoy it? If you’re into that 2010-2012 era of Taylor Swift that wasn’t quite country but not fully pop either, it might actually be worth your time to go back and listen to this. It’s quite reminiscent of that sound.