I watched Miley Cyrus’s new visual album while high…it was beautiful

Miley just recently uploaded to YouTube the full visual film of her latest album *Something Beautiful*. I did not watch it in theatres this summer, so I knew that I wanted to watch it at home using my Yamaha HS5 monitors—and I wanted to do it while high on a weed gummy.

I admit—when the album first came out last year, I didn’t love it. There were only a few songs on it that I really liked (mostly “Reborn” and “Prelude”), but the rest I just didn’t connect with. I felt the stuff she was singing about was nothing new, nothing we haven’t heard before, just the same relationship themes.

Photo: Glen Luchford

But over the past few months, I’ve come to like each of the songs more, especially as the music videos were being released. Going into the full visual album last night, I was excited to see how it would all come together.

And wow…it did not disappoint.

I went upstairs to my little loft office area, turned on the multicoloured string of Christmas lights that border the ceiling, and got the video connected to my computer monitor. I turned on the speakers and took out the weed gummy packets.

But as looked up instructions on the timing for taking THC gummies, I realized I should have taken one much sooner so that it would have kicked in by the time I wanted to watch the album. Now it would take too long to digest.

I was ready to go though, so I switched strategies and used my THC vape pen. I chose the Blueberry Rush one gram-vial which has 647 mg of THC per 1 gram (per vial essentially). I may sound like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t; I hardly ever take THC or CBD unless I’m at a music festival, so I’m still a noob. I wasn’t sure how many drags I should take on the pen, as I had nothing to gauge it off of, so I took four good drags on it and then settled in.

It became clear to me very quickly that I should have only taken one or two drags, because by the time the second song started, the title track “Something Beautiful”—I was p a n i c k i n g.

I could feel my entire body and it freaked me out. I became uncomfortable in my own skin. As I sat there on the love seat across from my desk, I became so aware of my neck, my arms, my legs. The heaviness of them, the stuck-ness. I fidgeted a bit, thinking this would push the feeling away but it didn’t. I sat there frozen, paranoid, too aware of myself.

My heart rate increased; it was pounding. I became too aware of that, of the blood moving around my body. I though, what if my heart explodes? What will happen to my dog if he’s left alone? What if I can’t handle any of this? Did I take too much? Should I have told someone I was doing this so that they’d know to check on me?

I started taking deep breaths through pursed lips to calm myself. I tried to watch Miley, tried to sink into the song and enjoy it, her feathery teal blue costume, her expressions, the glittery glossy lips, the perfectly done makeup, the ambient set design. But it didn’t help my paranoia when she sang, “I’m losing my breath, yes…it’s popping out my chest, yes.”

Photo: Columbia Records

This body-paranoia I get while high is nothing new. The last few years, whenever I’ve taken THC, if I take “too much” then I become super uncomfortable in my body because of how much I can feel it.

I’m still exploring the psychological significance of that and gauging what my limits are, but I think I know when this started happening—back in 2023 when I did mushrooms with my ex. Because before that, I don’t recall weed having this kind of negative effect on me where I freeze and panic, spiralling off into my head having all these crazy thoughts that just compound and make things worse.

But then, something incredible happened. During the third song, the album’s single, “End of the World”, I began to move. I’d been so scared to move at all, thinking that any physical stimulation would make things worse, but I started to dance a bit in my seat and started singing along and I immediately felt better. My heart rate went back to normal almost instantly. I’d found the antidote. I suddenly felt completely okay. And I had an epiphany in that moment:

I cannot always escape into my mind when I’m feeling challenged with something. I cannot think my way out of everything. Attempting to do so is just a desire to remain in control, to be safe by controlling everything, analyzing it, thinking of every possible thing, trying to know the outcome before it happens.

But it’s not the end of the world. I don’t need to control everything, because I can’t anyway. My body, and therefore my heart-mind and subconscious, can and should be trusted more in those moments.

Because it wasn’t my mind that calmed me last night; my mind actually made things worse the more I sat there stuck, frozen in my thoughts. It was my body that make it all better. It was movement that calmed me. As soon as I started moving, the heightened, weird, fuzzy feeling that caked my entire body dissipated. It was like I needed to move so that I could move the energy of the THC, process it, dispel it.

Living in my head too much and being disconnected from my body has been a major theme throughout my life. While I have figured this out before and have had epiphanies around embodiment and letting go of control, it’s like I had forgotten everything I’ve learnt and once again have been living in my head and not in my heart. Last night reminded me of the wisdom of the body, and how crucial movement is to my life.

I continued watching the album feeling much more comfortable and breathing easily again. As I watched, I saw a story unfolding, the story of a young woman who is idealistic and romantic, even in the end when her whole world is crumbling. I saw the story of a young woman who gives herself fully in matters of love, including the love of her fans. She is human and a person with dreams and private relationships, but she cannot escape fame. It follows her everywhere.

Photo from ThatGrapeJuice.Net

During “Walk of Fame”, it was so clear to me: Miley Cyrus really is going to live forever. She will go down in history. What a crazy thing to know about yourself. I can only imagine the sense of fulfillment one can feel from knowing such a sure thing about one’s existence.

In “Pretend You’re God”, the visuals were insane. They used wind machines to make her hair stand on end and whip around crazily, but you could always see her face. That, paired with the emotion and the music as she sings was just stunning. It was pure chaos. It was pure feeling. It was beautiful.

Screenshot, “Pretend You’re God” music video

The second amazing thing that happened was that I cried during “Reborn.” I absolutely adore that song, and watching the visuals with the high quality music speakers and being so dialled in because of the THC, I picked up things I hadn’t noticed before and couldn’t have noticed without the visuals.

The part that made me break down was towards the end when she sings “You’re so beautiful” for the second or third time, and on the screen, it shows the words as cut outs and through the cut outs, you can see Miley looking right at you, smiling slightly. I had this overwhelming sense that she was telling me directly that I’m a beautiful person. And it just made me cry.

A few frames later, we see her fiancé, Maxx, get up from beside her and leave the scene, so she turns back to the camera and just stares directly at you, blinking, connecting, being with you, for several moments. I interpreted that as her saying, even though I am in this relationship and I have my own personal life, I could never forget you (the audience, her fans), and I hope I’m enough for you if I give you all of my love.

And it feeds so nicely into the next and final song on the album, “Give Me Love”, where we see her dressed in this outfit that’s almost comically over-the-top with its massive plume of feathers that almost engulf her face, and a bedazzled, jewelled body suit. It’s like she’s been packaged up as a spectacle for us to watch and be entertained by.

She describes this utopian land filled with “golden apples that hang from the trees”, an “obscene blue horizon”, castles, towers, and heaven waiting behind the curtain. But then the bubble is popped; we start to question this utopia after the second verse when she says “behind the curtain terror awaits.”

Photo from x.com, “Give Me Love” music video

I see this as the curtain of the stage of fame. Sometimes she pulls back the curtain and it’s heaven—her fans are there, everyone loves her, everyone approves. Sometimes she pulls back the curtain and it’s her haters, bad press, critics, people tearing her down.

At the end of the song when she says, “I’m eaten alive by the mouth of a monster”, I see that as critics and media, the mouths and voices of pop culture who eat up celebrities for breakfast and then spit them back out.

In the final verse, as her “perfect eden goes down in flames,” she fearlessly calls out someone’s name. Perhaps it’s my name, the fan, the person watching and listening. Perhaps her fiancé’s name. Perhaps her mom’s, I’m not sure.

But I find there is so much emotion and hurt in that final line: “I’m eaten alive by the mouth of a monster while fearlessly calling out your name.” And the music is still so hopeful, so heavenly and beautiful; it makes the juxtaposition with the darker themes unsettling.

Overall, it was an incredible experience . The soundscape alone was just fantastic listening to it on my speakers. I noticed so many more layers of it than I have before, and the bass on some of the songs—oh my God! It was just so damn good. It made me want to learn how to better produce my own music.

I’ve been singing and playing piano since I was a kid, and I started writing songs in 2021. In 2024 I started learning how to produce music. But my music production skills are so incredibly amateur compared to what these guys can do.

There were many moments in the songs, usually the bridges, where it felt expanded compared to when I have just listened to it in the car. They really do know exactly what they’re doing when they make creative decisions around mood, ambience, background sounds, layering; I was blown away by how the audio and visual combined in such a way that it took me far off into a feeling, an emotion, a story.

Miley truly is an artist and her creative team is incredible. The production quality on this album was top notch.

I was still a bit high by the time it ended, so I followed up by watching the movie *Drive*, which was a fantastic choice because it has such a great soundscape. I never thought of myself as an audiophile before, but I think I am. And I look forward to having more experiences like this.