Miley Cyrus
Breakout
Release Date: Jul 22, 2008
Genre(s): Rock, Pop
Record label: Hollywood
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Album Review: Breakout by Miley Cyrus
Very Good, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating B
Miley Cyrus promised her new album would be more grown-up — it’s the kind of talk that sets off alarm bells when you’re a 15-year-old tween idol coming off a controversial, bare-backed Vanity Fair photo shoot. She’s already got a raspy, middle-aged rocker chick’s voice; would she suddenly try to live up to it with more provocative material? A clue to the answer comes in Breakout‘s opening verse, a harangue against life’s cruelest inequities: ”Every week’s the same/Stuck in school’s so lame/My parents say that I’m lazy/Getting up at 8 a.m.’s crazy/Tired of bein’ told what to do/So unfair, so uncool.” With that, a sigh of parental relief is heard across the land: Our little girl isn’t growing up. Phew.
Based on rating 7/10
Technically, Breakout is Miley Cyrus' second album, but her first was part of the two-disc set Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus, which attempted to capitalize on Cyrus' huge popularity as The Disney Channel's pop star in disguise and establish her as a real pop star under her own name. Though she scored a tween-pop hit with "See You Again," the songs Cyrus recorded as herself on Meet Miley Cyrus weren't significantly different than her Hannah Montana fare. She takes another step toward having her own pop identity with Breakout, the first album credited to Miley Cyrus alone.