Mert Alas on Shaping the New Miley Cyrus Era with 'Bass Persuades'
“When I first photographed Miley, she was already a beautiful kind of trouble.”
Few people understand the art of reinvention quite like Miley Cyrus. Over the years, the singer has shapeshifted from Disney darling to pop provocateur and rock ‘n’ roll superstar, continually finding new ways to rewrite her own story. Mert Alas, the renowned fashion photographer and creative force behind the visual world of her latest album, Bass Persuades, helped bring that latest chapter to life.
The pair’s creative relationship stretches back more than a decade, evolving from photographer and subject into something far more personal. “The photographs became less important than the friendship,” Alas tells Hypebae. Having grown up making art together, the pair now share a shorthand built on trust, creative freedom and a mutual visual instinct.
For Alas, capturing Cyrus means looking beyond the obvious. Rather than simply translating music into imagery, he wants to get much deeper than that, even down to “what the music smells like,” the desires, secrets and fleeting moments that exist between the lyrics. The result is a world that feels both romantic and dangerous, balancing the singer’s vulnerability with her appetite for reinvention and rebellion.
As Alas puts it, “Miley is a fascinating contradiction,” which keeps him guessing. Here, the creative reflects on their evolving partnership, the art of building a pop era and why, in a world obsessed with looking beautiful, he’s still searching for soul. Read on for the full interview.
You and Miley have been working together for over a decade. Looking back at your earliest collaborations, how has your creative relationship evolved, and what do you understand about each other now that you didn’t then?
When I first photographed Miley, she was already a beautiful kind of trouble. I saw that immediately. Over the years, the photographs became less important than the friendship. We grew up, misbehaved, lived a little and collected a few secrets along the way. The difference back then was that we were discovering each other. Now, we can look back on how amazing it is that we grew up making art together.
Was there a particular moment when your relationship shifted from you photographing Miley to you actively helping shape her creative vision?
I don’t think there was one particular moment. Miley has her vision; I have mine. For me, everything begins with trust. I need a complete connection with the artist, and something even more important is the freedom to create fully, without compromise.
Miley explained her world to me with absolute clarity. I listened, and then she allowed me into my own world with complete freedom; that’s when my job begins. After that, we orbit each other with curiosity until the project ends.
Working on Bass Persuades, was there anything that surprised you about Miley?
Her discipline. People confuse rebellion with chaos. Miley is a fascinating contradiction, completely fearless, wonderfully unpredictable, yet almost obsessively precise about her art and an insane romantic. She’s a hurricane with baby tears, and just when you think you know her, she invents another Miley. How many lives can one woman have?
How did you approach translating the album’s sound and emotional themes into imagery? Do you tend to respond to the music first, or do you build the visual concept alongside it?
I don’t like illustrating music; that would be terribly boring and obvious. I want to know what the music smells like. What time of night it belongs to. Who is kissing whom, who is lying, who is dancing, who is about to disappear. I want to hear the backstory of the lyrics.
This album made me think about love, desire, danger and a somewhat philosophical view of our time. I wanted the images to feel like memories of a night. Not so much a star but a cool, vulnerable and talented rock chic!
Can you walk us through the album cover?
A girl. A rose. A little danger. I love taking something innocent and making it slightly indecent. A rose is supposed to be romantic, yet you can’t hold a rose without being bitten by its thorns. In Miley’s mouth, suddenly it becomes something else… A secret, a whisper. And then there are her eyes. I wanted an image that could whisper and scream at the same time.
You’ve spent so much of your career working with fashion imagery. What’s different in the music world?
Fashion makes you look. Music makes you feel. I’ve spent my life creating beautiful illusions, but music is wonderfully uncontrollable. It gets under your skin without asking permission. It’s liberating! Fashion can seduce me in a second. Music will haunt me forever. I love both. I don’t want to choose between lovers.
What are you drawn to creatively at the moment? Are there visual languages, artists or cultural movements that are influencing the way you work?
I’m obsessed with perfection. I always have been, and not in a superficial way; I don’t mean perfect skin, clothes, perfect cake. Let’s get deeper. I love mastery. I love obsession. I love a thought after a thought after another hundred thoughts, just to find the exact color of a background. Madness!
I love surrendering completely to art: the discipline, the pleasure, the endless search for something extraordinary. I don’t believe in anything disposable. Not love, not a photograph, not an idea. What bores me is this desperate pursuit of beauty without a soul, without culture, without a single interesting thought behind it. I want to be impressed. By an idea, a sound, a word, something that stays with me. Don’t just give me pretty; I won’t take it.
What or who do you want to experiment with next?
Cinema. Madness. Design. I want to create something that makes people slightly uncomfortable with how much they love it. I’ve photographed enough beautiful people to know that beauty is only the beginning.
I love thinking, imagining and turning what I imagine into reality. Preferably as fast as possible. I’m terribly impatient with ideas. One day I want to make a film, the next design a nightclub or create a new expression of gin. I don’t really see the boundaries between these things. It’s all creation to me. And sometimes I simply sit at the piano and play, just to clear my head so I can mess it up again.
