‘The kids don’t want to dance’: Miley Cyrus’ new single Bass Persuades takes aim at phone addiction

Doomscrolling was so yesterday.

Miley Cyrus has a new prescription for what ails us, and it involves, the dance floor.

The Grammy winner dropped Bass Persuades on Thursday, Sept. 3, the lead single off her forthcoming 10th album of the same name, and it arrives with a biting sermon: Why are you still logged in? Go have fun? Maybe?

Fans watching the accompanying music video, directed by longtime collaborator Mert Alas, picked up on the vibe immediately, with one YouTube commenter summing it up perfect, she's telling us to touch some grass.

Fitting, too, since this new chapter comes with a rebrand: Cyrus is dropping her surname and stepping into the era simply as Miley.

Sonically, Bass Persuades is such fun, synths that nod straight back to the '80s wrapped around a dance-pop pulse, all while Cyrus takes aim at our collective phone addiction. The song's hook doubles as its thesis, with Cyrus repeating that the kids don't want to dance before pushing back against the scrolling and inviting listeners to surrender to the night instead. She threads in a wink to nostalgia too, referencing being glued to a screen and the days of catching a hit only if MTV played it.

Cyrus opens the clip in a leather hat, later switching into stockings, heels, and a leather jacket-and-glove combo, while backup dancers fill the frame around her. The choreography snowballs as the video rolls on, eventually spilling out of the studio and into the streets, where an entire crowd falls in behind her lead.

It's a fitting curtain-raiser for an album Cyrus says is really about music's grip on us. She wrote on Instagram when announcing the record on September 1 that music holds power over people, that we feel it, sing it, dance to it, and called the title a stand-in for the full spectrum of life, joy and heartache included.

The record follows 2025's Something Beautiful, and Cyrus had been dropping breadcrumbs for weeks before making it official, red-tinted photos on August. 30, followed two days later by a black-and-white clip of her shredding electric guitar.