A singer walks away from a film career to chase a record she hasn't finished. That was the deal Miley Cyrus made in 2012, when work on her fourth studio album quietly began while she was still contractually tied to Hollywood Records. The previous effort, Can't Be Tamed, had landed in 2010 with a title that suggested restraint. Two years later, restraint wasn't on the table. Cyrus signed with RCA Records in January 2013 and made one thing explicit: the album would come first, and acting would wait.
A shift away from the past
By 2013, the distance between Cyrus and her earlier catalog had become impossible to ignore. She described feeling disconnected from the music she'd made before, a strange position for an artist whose name was already globally recognizable. The shift wasn't cosmetic. Bangerz, released October 8, 2013 on RCA Records, marked her first project after leaving Hollywood Records. The pop and R&B textures on the album replaced the tone listeners had associated with her for years, and romance dominated the lyrics.
The rollout moved fast once the machinery engaged. The title Bangerz was announced August 6, 2013, timed to a Twitter milestone: 13 million followers on her page. Pre-orders opened August 25. The lead single, We Can't Stop, had already been out since June 3, 2013. Then came Wrecking Ball on August 24, a ballad that would become her first chart-topper on the Billboard Hot 100. The album itself debuted atop the Billboard 200, her fifth release to do so.
Commercial success and critical debate
First-week numbers put Bangerz among the biggest female debuts of 2013. The album eventually earned triple platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America. That commercial weight arrived alongside a critical conversation that couldn't decide what to make of her. Reviews were generally positive, but writers split over the provocative image Cyrus had built around the era. The production and originality drew praise, while the persona surrounding it became its own debate.
The guest list reads like a snapshot of hip-hop and pop radio in 2013. Britney Spears appears on one track. Big Sean, French Montana, Future, Ludacris, and Nelly each show up elsewhere on the album. That lineup — five rappers and one pop icon — tells you exactly how far the sound had moved from the guitar-driven performances of her earlier work. Dr. Luke handled production duties, and his fingerprints are all over the album's compressed, radio-tuned sheen.
Wrecking Ball's impact
Wrecking Ball did more than top the Hot 100. It gave Cyrus her first number one single in America, a fact that feels almost absurd given how long she'd been famous. The song's video arrived with an image that dominated the news cycle for weeks. Critics who praised the album's originality still struggled to reconcile that visual provocation with the music underneath. The tension between the two readings became part of the album's identity.
The tension between the two readings became part of the album's identity.
The Grammy machinery noticed. Bangerz received a nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 57th Grammy Awards. That nod placed Cyrus in a category alongside artists whose album cycles were far less chaotic. The nomination mattered less for the outcome than for the signal it sent: the industry was willing to take the record seriously even while the tabloid coverage focused on everything around it.
Thirteen years later, in 2026, the album's influence on pop culture looks different than it did in 2013. Retrospective assessments have credited Bangerz with reshaping what a pop star's transition into adulthood could look like — messy, confrontational, and commercially bulletproof. PopCrush included the title on a list of albums called Bangerz, a nod to how the word itself became shorthand for a certain kind of maximalist pop moment.
There's a detail buried in the release timeline that sums up the whole project. The title was announced August 6, 2013, pre-orders went live August 25, the second single dropped August 24, and the album arrived October 8. Three months, one era-defining ballad, and a complete reset of public perception. The acting career Cyrus put on hold never fully returned to center stage. The record she prioritized instead still sounds like the moment she decided what kind of artist she wanted to be.