MILEY CYRUS

RISQUE BUSINESS

Miley Cyrus struggles to reinvent herself as. . . Miley Cyrus

 

by Matt Ashare |  
Published October 2, 2013

Imagine, just a moment, if Miley Cyrus hadn’t been blessed with the opportunity to play the lead in the Disney drama “Hannah Montana.” If her wholesome smile hadn’t been beamed countless times into millions of homes for the nearly five-year run of the show. If the real-life growing pains she almost certainly experienced between the ages of 12 and 16 hadn’t so easily been conflated with the contrived struggles of her fictional namesake Miley Stewart. If she’d risen to tween stardom, not as Hannah Montana, but as Miley Ray Cyrus. Better yet, if she’d simply kept her given name — Hope Destiny Cyrus — and we mostly just knew her as the daughter of that early-’90s country dude, best remembered for setting off a line dancing craze with his 1992 single “Achy Breaky Heart,” while sporting an impressively magnificent mullet.

         Strip away the trappings of her Disneyfied good-girl persona — a goal she’s been working toward, both figuratively and at times literally, since at least 2008, when she posed in various stages of undress for a “Vanity Fair” photo shoot and images surfaced of her kissing a boy — and would anybody be shocked or chagrined by the sights and sounds of a now 20-year-old Cyrus acting quite a bit like a 20 year old? Admittedly, it’s hard to be sure. After all, we’re fairly adept at beating the drums of indignation when celebrities go off script. But, with the now eagerly anticipated new Cyrus album “Bangerz” almost certain to hit the ground grinding in less than a week — thanks in no small part to a provocative performance at the MTV Video Music Awards a little over a month ago — it might be worth trying to separate Miley the character from Miley the person, just to see if it’s possible to catch a glimpse of Miley the artist.

         It’s no easy task. For starters, when and where did Hannah Montana end and Miley Cyrus begin? Cyrus kinda, sorta, maybe began to position herself as a performer in her own right with the second soundtrack to the TV series, 2007’s “Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus,” a confusing two-disc set that only confirmed suspicions that the “characters” were one and the same. When she finally released an album under her own name, 2009’s not-so-subtly titled “Breakout,” she wasn’t taking any chances: even the disc’s one minor surprise, an unnecessarily brisk cover of the playful Cyndi Lauper hit “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” had the same corporate pop sheen and care-freely calibrated charm of a “Hannah Montana” production.

In fairness, it’s probably worth mentioning that the Disney franchise was still going strong through January of 2010, when the final episode of “Hannah Montana” aired, and that Cyrus starred in the 2009 feature ““Hannah Montana: the Movie.” Nevertheless, Cyrus took baby steps toward redefining herself on her 2009 single “Party in the U.S.A.,” a frothy anthem that name-checks Britney Spears and Jay-Z, while drawing on more “urban” influences — i.e., the track includes something akin to rapping. But not even a 2010 TMZ-fueled scandal involving a photo of Cyrus sucking on the business end of a bong could have adequately prepared the Miley masses for the series of well-staged shockers that have transpired in the lead up to “Bangerz.”

First, she cleaned house, severing ties with the Disney affiliated Hollywood label, and hiring Britney Spears’ former manager Larry Rudolph to shepherd her career. As if the latter weren’t a big enough red flag, Cyrus, who was already sporting a few tattoos, pulled a radical bleach-and-buzz number on her formerly flowing locks, opting for a kind of asymmetrical faux-hawk that just screams “edgy.” And, rather than hanging out with well-groomed Disney Channel pals like the Jonas Brothers and the 78violent sister act of Aly and AJ Michalka, she started turning up in the company of hip-hop types. Most notably, she has a cameo on the new Snoop Lion single “Ashtrays and Heartbreaks,” and she and Justin Beiber both guest on rapper Lil Twist’s very nearly viral novelty number “Twerk,” a track that’s threatening to start a Macarena-style dance craze and, potentially, bring Western Civilization crashing in on itself, or something like that.

But the media chatter over the scandalous remaking of Miley didn’t fully erupt until a scantily-clad Cyrus emerged from the belly of a beastly teddy bear at the VMAs, from whence she proceeded to engage in all manner of dirty dancing, up to and including twisting and writhing about; sticking her tongue all of the way out; slapping a much larger African-American woman on the hindquarters; and touching herself between the legs with the kind of foam finger usually employed with equal vigor by sports fans to indicate that their team is number one. Even worse, she disrobed further to engage in a tame game of bump and grind, playing the role of wild-child prop as Robin Thicke presided over a rendition of “Blurred Lines” that might best be described as “Boys Gone Mild.”

It was all just too much, and not unlike dozens of other big production numbers that have been staged at the VMAs. Which is to say it was definitely sexual, but not necessarily sexy — awkward, ridiculous, and desperate are three words to come to mind. To her credit, Cyrus pretty much cops to the first two in the new “Rolling Stone” cover story, explaining that she was nervous before the performance, and that if she’d intended it to be sexy, it would have been sexy. As for desperation, that sorta comes with the territory: pop stars may thrive on adulation, but in a pinch any kind of notoriety will usually do just fine.

So, whatever you may have thought of Cyrus’ performance, and as cynical as it may seem, it was a pretty canny career move, at least in the short term. Cyrus came away from that night secure in the knowledge that she was the most notorious pop star of the season, one that will soon include a new album by Lady Gaga, an artist whose name is synonymous with notorious.

The video for the first single from “Bangerz,” a more strident “Party in the U.S.A.”-style anthem with plenty of “hands in the air like we just don’t care” inanities, set a new record on VEVO, when the song’s racy video became the fastest to reach 100 million views (it took 39 days).  The video for the disc’s second single, the stoic power-ballad “Wrecking Ball,” which inexplicably features Cyrus licking a sledgehammer and swinging naked on an actual wrecking ball, achieved the same feat in less than a week.

The rest of what’s leaked from and about “Bangerz” isn’t particularly surprising. There’s a major cameo by Miley’s new pal Britney on the de-facto title track, the upbeat club rocker “SMS (Bangerz),” as well as guest raps by Nelly and Big Sean. A steamy techno groove propels a bristling duet with Coke Boys’ exotic Moroccan-American rapper French Montana (no relation to Hannah) that called “FU.” For better or worse, the album fairly formulaically applies state-of-the-art digital r&b production techniques to committee-outsourced songwriting that splits the difference between the empowered dance-pop of Ke$ha and the rock-lite of Avril Lavigne. And, blah, blah, blah. . .

It’s fun, catchy, and not particularly profound. And, while it does, to some extent, reveal a new, edgier side of Miley Cyrus, it looks and sounds an awful lot like a prodigal Hannah Montana, hell-bent on prolonging the adolescence she never had, acting out, engaging in mildly transgressive behavior to amuse herself and her friends while thumbing her cute little nose, and other parts of her body, at all of the haters out there. It may come across as tawdry and immature, but Cyrus can afford to be both, in part because it’s all essentially performative. And, as a recovering teen star, she must be all too aware of the fact that people will tune in, if only to get a little side of shadenfreude to go along with the main course of titillation. In that regard, Miley Cyrus may just be her best role yet.