Description
Noah Cyrus opens her debut full-length with a stark lyric: “When I turned 20, I was overcome/With the thought that I might not turn 21,” she murmurs over fingerpicked guitars and whispers of feedback. It’s a grab-you-by-the-throat introduction that is a fitting opening for The Hardest Part, a compact yet emotionally resonant collection of Laurel Canyon-recalling pop from the youngest member of the Cyrus clan. Channeling Cyrus’ recent travails, which include the death of her grandmother, her parents’ romantic problems, and her own addiction to and recovery from Xanax, The Hardest Part is unflinching yet tender.
Musically, The Hardest Part walks the line between modern acoustic pop and classic country, calling back to Cyrus’ Nashville-steeped upbringing while also being in step with of-the-moment young artists. “Every Beginning Ends” is a standout, a pedal-steel-accented duet with Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard that’s a solid tear-in-the-beer country ballad. Cyrus’ weathered alto and Gibbard’s Willie Nelson-like croon intertwine as they lament the slow dissolution of a romance with the forlorn vocal melody. And “Loretta’s Song,” which closes the album, is named after Cyrus’ maternal grandmother, Loretta Finley, who died in August 2020, but it’s a gorgeously wrought country-gospel hymn, with Cyrus’ voice in full flower as she leads a choir in celebrating life and the afterlife.
