Pomegranate Seeds: 7/10

The debut album by Noah Cyrus, “The Hardest Part” is the newest work from the young pop star. Not familiar with the rest of her discography, I was excited to dive into this album. Here are my thoughts on “The Hardest Part”.

The first track on the album “Noah (Stand Still)” was a perfect start as it would depict the type of songs to expect on this album. A calm guitar-heavy solo, it was a nice song that exemplified Noah’s singing talents and had some beautiful lyrics. While not very energetic and definitely more relaxed, this song was still very enjoyable to listen to. It also set my hopes high for the rest of the album. The second track would prove even better than the first, as “Ready To Go” was a fun song that thankfully wasn’t as mellow as the first song. The chorus was the best part of the entire track but it also felt very common, as if I could easily find hundreds of other songs with the same beat and instruments.

The next three tracks are a mix of the good and the bad. “Mr. Percocet” is one of the best songs on the album as it’s filled with deep, meaningful lyrics as well as having a good, catchy beat throughout the track. The song is about a story plenty of people could relate to which makes it an even better listen. This also seems to be a common theme throughout the album as every song seems to be about some sort of failed romance. 

The next two tracks are where this album starts to fall off. Track five, “Every Beginning Ends feat. Benjamin Gibbard”, was nice in the sense that Noah and Benjamin make great duet partners. Their voices together are beautiful and make this song very pretty to listen to. But it’s also a song that I’ve listened to a hundred times before as the beats, instruments, and ideas for the song feel very basic. Still enjoyable to listen to but also highlights the main problem of this album: the feeling I’ve heard all of these songs already. “Hardest Part” was also a slight letdown as it is just another track that is very guitar-heavy, and so far there seems to be no mixup in instruments on this album. While parts of the chorus are good, as well as the ending, it seems the only good part of the song is the chorus.

The remaining songs are some of the best on the album, with “I Just Want a Lover”, “Unfinished”, and “I Burned LA Down” being what I wanted the rest of the album to sound like. “I Just Want A Lover” is a great change from a guitar solo to a piano solo and is another track where you’re reminded of how good a singer Noah Cyrus is. The instruments-only parts were also fantastic and made this song truly great. One of the last tracks, “I Burned LA Down” is undoubtedly the best track of the album as Noah really brings the emotion to this record. The build-up to the chorus and the addition of new instruments as we go along was wonderfully done. The chorus was the best of any of the album’s songs and made this song really amazing.

Unfortunately, I would not avoid another letdown, as the last track on the album “Loretta’s Song” would be a slight disappointment compared to the previous songs. It sounds very much like the rest of the songs, specifically “Noah (Stand Still)” and “Every Beginning Ends”. It seems to have some country influence and not in a good way as a lot of this song feels like something I would hear at a back-roads hoedown. Compared to many of the other songs, it was a disappointing way to end the album

This album had a lot of good things going for it but also plenty of flaws. While overall I would just say that many of the songs were boring and too mellow, they were all very good lengths, and when Noah brought the energy the songs were really good. “The Hardest Part” got 7/10 pomegranate seeds as it definitely came with the good and the bad. It’s worth a listen for Noah Cyrus and acoustic fans.