Miley Cyrus Describes Her 10th Album as a Love Story Built on Peace and Self‑Discovery

Miley Cyrus built her 10th studio album around a feeling that has held steady across her last three records. Guest‑editing the Summer ’26 issue of Wonderland, she told actor Daryl Hannah that the project is a love story with a clear romantic thread — her engagement to Liily drummer Maxx Morando, confirmed in late 2025 — but it doesn’t stop there. “This one feels especially meaningful because this feeling has stayed with me through multiple eras,” Cyrus said. “That’s something I hadn’t really experienced before.”

That consistency marks a shift. Cyrus describes a peaceful kind of love that she sees now as twofold: the partnership with someone else and the relationship she’s built with herself. “Once your relationship with yourself changes, every relationship around you changes too,” she explained. “I think this record celebrates both of those equally.” That duality — romantic and interior — is what she says makes the album more than a single narrative.

The process itself was deliberately lean. Cyrus kept the tracklist to 10 songs and entered the studio with a rough sound and concept, using that as a compass rather than a rigid blueprint. She worked with people she trusted, including Morando, in an atmosphere where ideas could be discarded or stretched without friction. “Songwriting feels like crossing over to another side sometimes,” she said. “A new song can feel like I’ve already heard it before … almost like I’m remembering it instead of creating it.”

Visually, the album already had its coordinates: red, a leather hat, a specific frame. She handed creative keys to stylist Alastair McKimm, whose work threads through the Wonderland issue, but the early clarity came from inside. “I trusted that the vision would reveal itself instead of trying to control every piece from day one,” Cyrus noted. That restraint, paired with a collaborative instinct that she compares to a dance, defines a project built without forced urgency — and with a small circle willing to follow a feeling.