The most egregious missteps on Something Beautiful are its pop songs. There is nothing remotely close to the tepid but inviting hooks of “Flowers” within its 52-minute runtime, despite many attempts at funk and disco-tinged hits. “Easy Lover” feels like another Bruno Mars castoff, with its walking bassline, stomping beat, and chirping “oohooh-ooh-oohs.” “You’ve got the love I always needed,” Cyrus rasps over Brittany Howard’s electric guitar. “Tie me to horses and I still wouldn’t leave ya.” This one stilted line sums up the entire song: It’s referential, uninspired, and really just a rearrangement of pieces that don’t quite fit in their new configuration.

“Walk of Fame” and “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved” are atrocious for similar reasons; the sanitized disco beats, the weak self-mythologizing, the drag-diva vocab that’s already been co-opted by major corporations. “Walk of Fame”—as in, “Every time I walk, it’s a walk of fame”—can’t be saved by Danielle Haim’s guitar or Howard’s celestial vocal loop. In fact, Howard helps tank the song by saluting Cyrus with the lamest pop eulogy of all time:

You’ll live forever
In our hearts and minds
An ageless picture
A timeless smile
We’ll wear it on our T-shirts
A star buried in the pavement
Everyone will walk around it

Naomi Campbell has an even more pointless task on “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved,” only her lines are so absurd they might be comedic gold. In between Cyrus’ arena-rock belting, Campbell half-whispers reverent non-sequitors like, “She has the perfect scent,” “She speaks the perfect French,” and “She never wears a watch, still she’s never late” in a saggy attempt at ballroom panache. Cyrus has called Something Beautiful her “gayest” album yet, but its “gayest” song sounds like it was engineered by a marketing team trying to spike Fiji Water sales during Pride.

That’s the reigning issue with Something Beautiful: It is more interested in signaling than embodying. Cyrus can access the best musicians and producers, and she can register a genuine interest in more subversive art, but few songs on her new album feel like they emerge from experience, or a burning desire to explore new sounds. It’s possible Cyrus is completely aware of her own limitations here. “I’m in the record business,” she recently told The New York Times. “When I sign a contract, they’re buying records that they wish to sell, so I understand that I am setting myself up to become merchandise.” But then Cyrus said something so vulnerable it was alarming: “At one point in my life, I look forward to just being an artist, untied, untethered. At some point I’ll get to do that.” I wonder what that will sound like.