Miley Cyrus is as at ease as ever strumming her guitar and singing songs from her latest album, “Younger Now,” throwing in a verse of her godmother, Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” that demonstrates that the family genes for generating music were passed down perfectly intact. The setting was her Tennessee family farm, Singin’ Hill, and the name bestowed by her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, could not be more fitting. “I never started making music,” Miley Cyrus emphatically insisted to Anthony Mason in her October 29 “Sunday Morning” profile, “I just always made music.”
Miley fed her horses their favorite tidbits, and her mom, Tish, sat by her on the porch as she played.
Billy Ray joked about the birds overhead “circling his career,” but clearly, this family maintains their bond as a priority, which came in handy as the former Disney star attempted to step out of that shadow.
That safety is still evident. Photos of Miley with her dad in the same year he devoted proceeds from his omnipresent hit “Achy Breaky Heart” to founding the home line the walls. The prolific, singing, songwriting daughter often pays tribute to her parents’ commitment to unconditional love, but she has also found her own strength and inspiration from “slaps” taken from all sides, a strength that never knocks her down.
Outliving the past
Miley Cyrus shuns the reminder that her “Hannah Montana” life was a decade ago, saying “don't remind me.” She has come to terms with the time as being the “dream” of letting her do what she wanted to do, but also the duality of being a nightmare of sorts, locked into an identity that imprisoned the buoyant spirit of the girl whose first song was “Pink Isn't a Color, It's an Attitude.”
The genuineness that came across in Miley Stewart on camera and in the stage persona of Hannah Montana was no accident, it was palpable because “I was under there,” asserted Miley Cyrus.
She felt the shackles of an America, like her aunt, who never wanted her to grow up, and she knew it would take a big song, a big change, and an all-around big piece of equipment, to break free. With 2013’s “Bangerz” and her first #1 song, “Wrecking Ball,” a full-force demolition of her Disney-created image came, complete with a video that's now been viewed almost a billion times.
What Miley didn't realize was that her most provocative poke at her past would come while wearing bear ears.
Being her own person
Even being as seasoned as she was in the business, Miley Cyrus never imagined that the statement of her new music would propel her into “truly being my own person” in the way that it did. Her performance at the VMA’s wearing perky little bear ears but no pants as she twerked onstage with Robin Thicke really was a watershed moment of no turning back.
She still firmly admonishes that “Bears don't wear pants!” The artist herself developed a new appreciation of the power that she had, and the ways to use it when nothing about the performance was ignored by the media for months.
The singer-songwriter has openly admitted that the preponderance of poses with her flexible tongue and bold encounters, such as one wearing pasties right in front of a blushing red Paul McCartney, were her own defense mechanisms in battling her own hesitations and fears, but in the moment, were still fun. She is content and very much in love again with seven-year beau, Liam Hemsworth, who not only sparks inspiration for “Malibu” but also another more tender ballad, “Miss You So Much” on the new album.
Cyrus offers “You’re welcome, everyone, I took all the slaps for you,” reiterating that she’s taken hits for everything that the public could be angry about, leaving “nothing that seems so bad after all the things I’ve done.” Billy Ray Cyrus declared with surety that “her cornerstone is solid. She knows. Her heart is good. Her mind is good.”
Miley Cyrus has pillars of love and examples of others who pick themselves up to lean on, and she recently had her own moment of a lifetime in getting to hug Hillary Clinton. Miley recently finished reading “What Happened,” and described “seeing things in a whole different way.” The songwriter reflects new strength in her own songs, asserting, “If she can lose an election, I can do this.” Miley Cyrus can always count on love, family, and music, and find her own strength to keep growing.
