Pop stars from the pre-streaming era, Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus returned Friday with new projects, each of which symbolizes something of a reset.
Miley Cyrus plays a pop star in an upcoming episode of the sci-fi series “Black Mirror.” Set in the near future, the dystopian drama looks as creepy as usual — but it’s also a little quaint, since it suggests Cyrus will still be the type for that job in 10 or 20 years.
Music has moved quickly in the streaming era beyond the models that flourished in the 2000s and early 2010s. Not so long ago, Post Malone and Cardi B were redefining how idols emerge (and what their music sounds like); then Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X showed up and threatened to somehow make Post and Cardi feel like the establishment.
Yet the old stars haven’t disappeared. Taylor Swift recently dropped her single “Me!”; Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber teamed this month for “I Don’t Care.” (Both songs have been blocked from the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 by Lil Nas X’s viral country-trap smash, “Old Town Road.”) Now Cyrus and Katy Perry, both of whom have been with us for well over a decade, are back with new music that came out Friday.
Tellingly, each project symbolizes something of a reset. Cyrus’ “She Is Coming” — a six-song EP the singer says will be the first of three such releases in 2019 — finds her dabbling in hip-hop again after she turned away from it for 2017’s self-consciously rustic “Younger Now.
