Musical Structure and Composition
Overall, Breakout is dominant on pop rock but explores a variety of other musical genres. The opening track, "Breakout", is a dance-pop number that begins with a fast beat, composed of chiming electric guitar and drums and later progresses to "the snares skip and the keyboards shimmer"; "ecstatic beats" pummel throughout. The song's lyrics are "a girls-only call to fun" that anecdote on feelings about coming of age and the desire to be school-free. The uptempo refrains of "7 Things" are pop punk influenced. The song is "a three-tempo patchwork quilt", transitioning "from sensitive breakup song in the strummy verses to punky-pop kiss-off in the double-time choruses." "7 Things"' lyrics list seven traits Cyrus hates about an ex-boyfriend. "The Driveway" is a power ballad whose lyrics regard a breakup, insisting "nothing hurts like losing when you know it's really gone." The cover of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" replaces the subtle reggae undercurrent in the original version with a more rock music driven sound that includes pop punk beats and string stabs. The lyrics of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" primarily discuss the "desire to let loose with one's friends", touching upon details of the life of an overworked child star. The song "Full Circle" is composed of a several pop rock hooks; in one of the hooks, Cyrus finishes various words with "Oh, oh, oh!". The lyrics describe not quitting a relationship.
"Fly on the Wall" is prominently an electropop song that is also composed of a number of hooks, which yell the song's title, while the instrumentation relies on electric guitars. Unlike other songs on Breakout, "Fly on the Wall" has Cyrus' voice processed to sound different. The song's lyrics taunt "the listener for being on the outside of her inner sanctum". The target of the message has been interpreted differently by contemporary critics – an ex-boyfriend and the media have most commonly been referred to. "Bottom of the Ocean" is a contemporary ballad that contains a sound reflecting influences from minimalist music. The backdrop for the "feel-bad" love song features ocean wave sounds. The track "Wake Up America" has a "cheeky riff-rock backdrop" as its, while its lyrical content concerns environmentalism, where Cyrus mainly pleads for audiences to give the Earth "just a little attention". In the first verse, she "admits that she doesn't know exactly what's up with this global warming but believes there's something we should all do about it". "These Four Walls" is a power ballad accented with country pop elements and twangy vocals and lyrics which speak of an interior narrative. "Simple Song" has "bile" sound and is lyrically about moments in coming of age where a person "can't tell which way is up, which way is down" and they feel the need to alienate themselves. In "Goodbye", Cyrus' vocal performance is more "roosty" with a more "natural-sounding accompaniment" while, in the lyrics, she finds her remembering the "simple things ... until ." "See You Again" (Rock Mafia Remix) is dance-pop number, fusing sultry vocals with techno beats. The track has Cyrus detailing previous scenes and plans to redeem herself.
Read more about this topic: Breakout (Miley Cyrus Album)
Famous quotes containing the words musical, structure and/or composition:
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
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“I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.”
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“When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nor diminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)