Miley Summons the Spirit of Britney’s “Gimme More” for “Bass Persuades”

It’s no secret that Miley Cyrus is a long-time Britney Spears fan. This much immortalized on 2009’s “Party in the U.S.A.,” when she’s comforted by how “a Britney song was on” amidst her various “touching down in L.A.”-based anxieties. In 2013, Cyrus made her fangirl dreams come true by collaborating with Spears on “SMS (Bangerz),” later stating in 2018 that she is forever Spears’ “biggest fan” and would love to work with her again. Since that didn’t seem to be in the cards, Cyrus kept settling for listening to Spears’ oeuvre instead. That much was apparent when, in 2024, she further proved that “a Britney song was literally on…. all year!” when she shared Spears as her top artist for Spotify Wrapped. Clearly, that influence has saturated her brain and materialized in the form of “Bass Persuades,” her first single from the album of the same name.

In contrast to the first release that listeners got to hear from Something Beautiful, which was the title track (even though “End of the World” is considered the first single), “Bass Persuades” is the antithesis of a slow jam. Starting from the moment Cyrus announces, “Let’s go” (in a manner almost reminiscent of Shania Twain saying, “Let’s go girls” at the beginning of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”) and the hypnotic opening notes lull one into the latest world that Cyrus has presented us with. A world that is decidedly inspired by Spears’ Blackout era. Indeed, when the beat drops at the nineteen-second mark, it seems as if co-producers Maxx Morando, Michael Pollack, Kid Harpoon and Cyrus are deliberately trying to remind listeners of “Gimme More.”

The same goes for the Mert Alas-directed video. Which opens on someone (wearing black leather gloves) playing a hand of cards and laying out the Queen of Hearts one before cutting to Cyrus walking down a darkened street in a hat that is decidedly Britney circa the 2000s with its black leather military style (or “Breton” style, if one sees it that way instead). Cyrus then enters the kind of place one would expect to see in 1920s Berlin…or in a Madonna video (e.g., “Open Your Heart”—this also emphasized by the style of chairs that are in the place). To be sure, there can be no denying M’s influence here either (which itself influenced Spears, who then funneled it down to Cyrus). Complete with Alas directing, as he is known for his film and photography work with Madonna in his duo form of Mert & Marcus. And yes, the aesthetic they’re known for creating is markedly of the “high fashion” variety.

As Cyrus proceeds to “step into the scene” (as the opening verse describes), she asserts dominance over the others (mostly men) in the underground club. It helps that she has a nightstick to do this. Crawling over a wooden table (a maneuver Spears engages in during her “Slumber Party” video) as the beat keeps getting more “Gimme More”-oriented, she delves into the siren (a.k.a. mermaid)-like chorus, “And I don’t wanna change your mind/The bass persuades/No, I don’t wanna change your mind (let’s go)/The kids don’t wanna dance, the kids don’t wanna dance/We can’t stay like this forever [though, ironically, Cyrus did once claim on “Rose Colored Lenses,” “We could stay like this forever/Lost in wonderland”]/Let’s surrender to the night, put our bodies close together.”

Amidst this simultaneous lament and stream of consciousness, Cyrus veers more toward Madonna as she grabs her crotch and gets all “Justify My Love” sexual with one of the fellow Breton hat-wearers in the place. A pole also happens to appear in the background, which automatically links “Bass Persuades” to the “Gimme More” video. Though, in the next scene, Cyrus’ choreo and mise-en-scène with her shirtless male dancers is unmistakably “Girl Gone Wild,” the lead single from Madonna’s MDNA (since it was later claimed that “Give Me All Your Luvin’” was just a “promotional” single). With the video directed by none other than Mert and Marcus (along with the album artwork itself shot by the duo, just as Cyrus’ Bass Persuades album artwork is shot by Alas).

The Madonna-ness (think: her woefulness about phones/technology on Confessions II’s “Everything”) then seeps into the verse, “Glued your eyes to the telephone screen/But you missed the hit without MTV/Go analog, like the cinema/Just look out the window and what do you see in the treetops?/It’s a clear shot/Yeah, chaos is king/But you know that you can’t stop, won’t stop/Your fate is a monster/Love it so much, go and hang it on a poster.” The overarching message being that the reason “the kids don’t wanna dance”—despite TikTok being a medium known for dance-centric virality—is because their generation was never really “taught” how. They weren’t given the luxury of a Madonna or a Britney Spears to show them “the way and the truth and the life.” Never presented with the kind of truly thumping bassline that could get their asses on the dance floor (least of all for more than fifteen seconds’ worth of “content”). Hell, never even presented with a real-life dance floor at a club because that’s what their living rooms or bedrooms are for.

The overall confinement of the “Bass Persuades” video to one location (much like, again, Spears’ Jake Sarfaty-directed “Gimme More”) speaks to that “analog” attention span Cyrus is hoping to somehow regain from audiences. Reminding them that, if the song has an irresistible enough bassline, one can dance to it for the entire duration in a space that was designed for “letting loose”: the dance floor.

And yes, that dance floor can even expand into the streets, just as it does by the end of “Bass Persuades,” with Cyrus then seemingly calling upon the spirit of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video for the choreo and look she’s going for (even extending to how overtly the backdrop wants to be recognized as an L.A.-posing-as-New York one). Which would round out a “holy pop trinity” of references (even though, when it comes to alluding to Madonna and Michael Jackson, it’s usually Prince that goes with them as the “holy trinity”—especially since each was born in 1958). All three of which stem from a time when it was not the norm to be buried in one’s phone and obsessed with “documenting” the fun, but rather, fully experiencing it and losing oneself in the music. As Cyrus suggests she herself is doing with the lyrics, “Forgetting there’s a world when this record is on” and “Spin it for a minute, make it all disappear/If we ain’t moving, baby, baby why are we here?” Something about that also echoing Spears on “I’m a Slave 4 U” when she sings, “I know I may come off quiet/May come off shy/But I feel like talkin’, feel like dancin’/When I see this guy/What’s practical? What’s logical/What the hell, who cares?/All I know is I’m so happy/When you’re dancin’ there.”

The “I’m a Slave 4 U” lyrical parallels continue when Cyrus offers a Britney-esque “sensual” spoken-word portion that goes, “You feel something in the music/You don’t know what it is/But I can see it in your eyes/You wanna lose yourself to this (let’s go).” Almost as if she’s trying to hypnotize her listener into remembering (or even learning for the first time) how to let go and lose oneself to a rhythm without trying to, in some way, “curate” or “quantify” it. Then, as the song comes to a close and Cyrus repeats, “Don’t you want to dance?” (almost as pleadingly and earnestly as Human League asking, “Don’t you want me baby?”), there is a notable similarity to Spears asking, “Baby, don’t you wanna dance up on me/To another time and place?”

What Cyrus seems to be saying with “Bass Persuades” is that one would have to dance to another time and place in order to experience music as it was meant to be. Barring a time machine, however, “Bass Persuades” will have to suffice as a transporting property.