With her latest album, Bass Persuades, Miley Cyrus is stepping into a whole new era.
“This album happened fast, but that’s been my life for 20 years,” the pop star wrote on Instagram. She described the record—which she is due to perform live at the Hollywood Bowl on October 16 and 18—as a kind of homage to the myriad sounds and styles that Cyrus has experimented with since the start of her career. “Once I started wishing to land a role that would make LA my home it’s been nonstop,” she noted. “This album is a reflection of everywhere I’ve been along the way, and the peace that came with starting to slow it all down.”
Mert Alas and Miley Cyrus on set for “Bass Persuades.”
Her album visuals are similarly expansive. To capture the various characters and moods of her songs “Bass Persuades,” “Let’s Get Married,” and “Different Religion,” Cyrus teamed up with her close friend and frequent collaborator Mert Alas, a legendary fashion photographer and director, for the music videos. (He also shot her album cover.)
“Doing a project with a friend is always fun, but it was also incredibly exciting to collaborate with such a talented musician and artist as Miley,” Alas tells Vogue exclusively. “To play, dream, and create together: It’s not something we often get the opportunity to experience.”
The duo first met at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles when Cyrus was a teenager, working together on many shoots in the years that followed. Their conversations around her Bass Persuades videos began organically. “She sent me a message asking when I was next in LA, and I responded saying I had just landed,” Alas recalls. They met the next day, and Cyrus played him the entire album. “We started planning on the spot,” he says.
Cyrus rehearses for “Bass Persuades.”
What they set out to do in the visuals was to represent all of Cyrus’s facets as an artist. “This era of Miley is really about her coming to terms with herself and her dangerous side, as well as her confidence and her musical side,” says Alas. “We wanted to create a feeling of raw, dangerous, and beautiful confidence in the photos and videos.”
Their first video together, for Cyrus’s dance-floor-ready lead single, “Bass Persuades,” started things with a bang. “Miley talks about the world we’re heading toward, reminding us that maybe this is why we’re not dancing anymore,” says Alas. “When she says that ‘kids don’t wanna dance,’ what she really means is that she wants to dance—and she wants everybody to dance.”
Cyrus on set for “Bass Persuades.”
To match that energy, the video drew on the work of pop icons like Madonna and Britney Spears. “It’s an ode to pop music from the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s,” says Alas. “It’s about reminding people of the strength, beauty, and magic of pop music. It’s about getting together, human touch, movement, letting go—and ultimately, it’s about dancing again.”
For their second video, “Let’s Get Married,” Cyrus and Alas headed in a totally different direction. The singer wanted to reveal a softer side of herself, letting fans in on the sweetness of her relationship with Maxx Morando, her fiancé. “The inspiration came from the day she told me she was getting married to Maxx,” says Alas. “I met him, I loved him, and I was so happy for my friend that she was finally getting married.”
Cyrus on set for “Let’s Get Married.”
Alas and Cyrus imagined what a pre-wedding party might look like for the happy couple, ultimately staging a small gathering at the Chateau Marmont—a place already full of meaning for the two friends. “It’s really about love, friendship, togetherness, and sentimentality,” says Alas. “We shot it in Room 49. That room had been the setting for many parties with Miley in the past. We’ve spent so much time there together—we’ve gone crazy, danced, talked, laughed. So in a way, the video also became a little moment from one of our own parties, capturing that sense of intimacy and history between us.”
Today, Cyrus and Alas dropped their third video together, “Different Religion,” featuring the band Model/Actriz. “It’s about a girl who is religiously obsessed with this guy and becomes involved in a dangerous love affair in the desert,” says Alas. “Is he a vampire? Is he a knife-thrower? In the end, it was all a dream.”
Yet again, the visuals served up an entirely new direction. This time, the video sees Cyrus on an open road flanked by mountains, racing around in a Pontiac Firebird and shredding on an electric guitar. The raucous energy was entirely intentional. “It’s rock at its best,” says Alas, “and the fact that she was actually playing the guitar herself for the video made it even more magical.”
Cyrus and Alas on set for “Different Religion.”
Working on the three utterly distinct videos was a challenge both for Cyrus as a performer and Alas as a director. But it was also a great deal of fun: Alas says he got to see her in a whole different mode: full-on superstar. “What was especially exciting was seeing how committed and serious she was throughout the entire process, from rehearsals and costumes to the smallest details,” says Alas. “And I loved that, because details are my world.”
