Pink Floyd Goes Pop? The Unlikely Star Using ‘The Wall’ as Next Album’s Inspiration

The days of British psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd dominating the Top 40 pop charts might be long gone, but their creative approach will be returning to the modern pop world via the child actor turned divisive musical icon, Miley Cyrus. The former Hannah Montana star is no stranger to trying on new genres, attitudes, and aesthetics in the pursuit of creative expression.

For her 2025 concept album Something Beautiful, Cyrus turned to the trippy, avant-garde rock ‘n’ roll of the 1970s for inspiration.

Miley Cyrus Bases Pop Album On Pink Floyd

Miley Cyrus’ 2025 project, Something Beautiful, will be a visual album unlike anything the actor-turned-pop star has put out before. In a November 2024 interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Cyrus revealed that she based a lot of her album on Pink Floyd’s monumental 1979 concept album and rock opera, The Wall.

For Cyrus, it’s more than just a similar creative approach. She has a deep sentimental attachment to the British psych-rock band’s magnum opus. She described renting a limo with her older brother and a good friend, donning fur coats, smoking marijuana, and watching The Wall for the first time. “We really leaned in,” Cyrus said. “So, I have this heart-first attachment to it.”

Pink Floyd’s The Wall is equal parts creepy and catchy, following the mental collapse of Pink, a bitter rockstar struggling under the weight of his fame. Cyrus’ version, she says, will have “a better wardrobe and [be] more glamorous and filled with pop culture.”

“It’s a concept album that’s an attempt to medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music. I would like to be a human psychedelic for people—I don’t want anyone trying to be like me or imitate me or even be inspired by me. I want to impact frequencies in your body that make you vibrate at a different level.”

This Isn’t Her First Foray With Floyd

Miley Cyrus has long been a fan of Pink Floyd, an appreciation we don’t doubt deepened after taking a glamorous limo ride while watching The Wall (ah, to be so rich you get to watch Pink Floyd’s rock opera in a limo and not a college dorm room, like this writer). The pop star started incorporating music from the album into her live performances, including the ominous and soaring track, “Comfortably Numb.”

During her 2019 performance at the iHeartRadio Music Festival, Cyrus introduced the Pink Floyd track by saying that while she sings many songs because she knows the fans will enjoy them, she saves some songs for live shows because she enjoys them, including “Comfortably Numb.” Cyrus lays her part-country, part-rock, part-pop vocals over the backing band, which stays relatively true to the 1979 track’s original arrangement and instrumentation.

Her rendition of “Comfortably Numb” becomes even more poignant when one considers her own trek through stardom at a vulnerable young age. While her 2025 project definitely sounds glitzier than The Wall, we don’t doubt she’ll have a perspective on fame worthy of the original. Now, to find a limo to rent to watch Cyrus’ album Cyrus style…

Photo by Rob Verhorst/Redferns