Miley Cyrus achieves UK chart double

BBC

Miley Cyrus has achieved a relatively rare chart feat in the UK – topping both the singles and album chart in the same week.

Her eighth studio album Endless Summer Vacation enters the chart in pole position, while her single Flowers spends a ninth week at number one.

It’s the star’s first number one album since 2013’s Bangerz.

That record also scored the chart double, alongside the multi-platinum-selling single, Wrecking Ball.

Flowers, which is said to be about the end of her marriage to actor Liam Hemsworth, is now tied with Olivia Rodrigo’s Drivers License as the longest-running number one single by a female solo artist this decade.

Last Friday’s release of Endless Summer Vacation (which includes two versions of Flowers) ensured that the song reclaims its title as the most-streamed song of the last seven days, overtaking the viral smash Boy’s A Liar Pt. 2 by PinkPantheress and Ice Spice.

Reviews for the album have been broadly positive, praising Cyrus’s vulnerability and songcraft, while lamenting that some of her rougher edges have been sanded off.

“The current of honesty that runs through Endless Summer Vacation encourages the listener to press play on the record again, and the stories here get even better on a second or third listen,” wrote Consequence Of Sound. “It’s cohesive without feeling repetitive.”

The album “holds your full attention even if it isn’t Cyrus’s boldest or most visionary,” said the NME, calling the songs a “remarkably intriguing” insight into her post-divorce state of mind.

Pitchfork noted that the record is divided into “AM” and “PM” sections, with the former, written alongside Harry Styles’ collaborator Kid Harpoon, outshining the “maddening” and “grating” second half.