Extreme makeover
Miley Cyrus’ party-crazed Bangerz image is paying off.
Time 100
Montana
Hannah Montana
Hannah it before, trying to shed the squeaky clean Donny And Marie image in the early 1980s to the point where one of his agents suggested they spread false drug arrest rumours. He rejected that idea, and while he did have a minor comeback in 1988 with a tougher appearance, he never did shake the vanilla image.
Michael Jackson managed to blow through that problem on sheer talent – and his Thriller makeover – but most teen pop stars (from David Cassidy to the Jonas Brothers) stall out or flame out during that transition. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake all grew up in showbiz being part of the The Mouseketeers crew, but they certainly weren’t known as kids to the extent of Jackson or Cyrus.
Spears was 17 when she launched her music career in the schoolgirl uniform and belly shirt with Oops... I Did It Again, drawing the wrath of parents and pundits. Aguilera wasn’t far behind and quickly went from her toned-down genie look to the Dirrty “Xtina” phase.
“I’ve seen this all play out before,” Osmond wrote. “It’s the same ball game, just different players in a different time.”
Cyrus was only nine when she ventured into show business as Kylie in Doc, a series that starred her father Billy Ray Cyrus, and she was 13 when Hannah Montana launched in 2006. The first hint of what was to come was the bedsheet shoot with Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair in 2008, which was written off as a mistake or misunderstanding.
Everybody moved on and she was able to do three more years of Hannah Montana, along with a movie. She also scored a No. 1 album with Breakout, a No. 2 hit with Party In The U.S.A. (from the 2009 EP The Time of Our Lives) and a US$67mil (RM211mil) grossing Wonder World Tour, which did not stop here.
Her 2010 campaign was more of a mixed bag. The Last Song, her big-screen break from the Hannah Montana character, was a box office hit but critical flop. Her attempt at an edgier pop style on third album, Can’t Be Tamed, was a bust, written off as watereddown Spears. When her next two movie roles, LOL and So Undercover, didn’t even get a wide release she was quickly on her way to oblivion.
Enter party-crazed Cyrus, short-haired and sneering, twerking and singing about “molly” (ecstasy) in We Can’t Stop and its erotic video. It dropped last June followed by the VMAs in August, prompting 300,000 tweets per minute.
It would have been pretty embarrassing if she had gone down in flames as the teddy bear Miley, but the Bangerz album has been anything but a bust. Even riding high with The Voice exposure, Aguilera fell flat trying to go Gaga on Bionic. In this case, people have taken to Miley’s tongue-out-of-cheek mix of sensuality and devilish humour, partly because she was able to back it up with the radio-ready hits We Can’t Stop and Wrecking Ball.
Although she’s no Whitney Houston or Aguilera-level diva, known to be a bit nasally, Wrecking Ball, like previous hit The Climb, does show off an impressive range. And being from a musical family in Tennessee, she knows her way around a folk or country tune. Her rendition of You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go was among the better covers on the Bob Dylan Chimes Of Freedom tribute in 2012 and she does godmother Dolly Parton proud on Jolene, which she’s doing on this tour.
She’s certainly more advanced in her musical tastes than most of her Top 40 peers – she’s shouted out the Pixies as one of her favourite bands – and it shows up on this Bangerz tour in her covers of The Flaming Lips and The Smiths.
For the April issue of the Time 100 Artists, Parton weighed in on her controversial goddaughter, saying she had to do something drastic to break away from Hannah Montana (“she’s just smotherin’ and chokin’ in it”). The country legend conceded, “And she doesn’t have to be so drastic. But I will respect her choices. I did it my way, so why can’t she do it her way?”
No one will forget the teddy bear, but at 21, she has lots of time to regain her dignity and she’ll do that with a net worth estimated at US$150mil (RM474mil) – Pittsburgh PostGazette/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services