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Saturday 30 January 2016

Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz: first-listen review – leaving her wrecking ball behind

Miley Cyrus used the VMAs to announce the surprise release of her 23-track album, made with The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne. But how does it sound?

 

Miley Cyrus … now making sprawling and frank psychpop. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage/MTV1415

There aren’t many pop stars in the industry quite like Miley Cyrus. Namely, there don’t seem to be any former teenybopper Disney singers able to wield as much creative freedom as she does on this sprawling, 23-song album. Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, surprise-released after Cyrus hosted this year’s MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday 30 August, completes her transformation into dual-identity star: both provocative tween idol and free-wheeling chaser of the muse.

Her fifth album presents Cyrus as the colourful, twisted and self-dubbed pansexual, the furthest removed she’s yet been from the Hannah Montana persona that made her famous. If you’re not up to speed with her latest topless Instagram selfies or various interviews addressing body dysmorphia and sexual fluidity, Cyrus uses this album to tackle the extreme highs and lows of love and death, careening from crisp synthpop and trap to a woozy, buzzing psychedelia.

You can hear lead producer Wayne Coyne’s hand all over Dead Petz. The Flaming Lips frontman shares production duties with the rest of his band, as well as hip-hop hitmaker Mike Will Made It, Cyrus’s core collaborator on her all-grown-up-now RCA debut Bangerz. The results ping back and forth between all of Cyrus’s different guises.

There are still the hints of the hip-hop and trap pastiches from Bangerz. Cyrus’s distorted voice screams: “Yeah, I smoke pot / yeah, I love peace / but I don’t give a fuck / I ain’t no hippie,” before opener Dooo It! flips from sub-bass rumbles into a boombap coda – and you can hear hints of MIA’s abrasive bravado throughout. The Floyd Song (Sunrise), written for a pet dog that died in April 2014 while Cyrus was on tour, meshes acoustic guitar, zapping electronics and warm synth pads in a way that almost sounds like Cyrus fronting a Flaming Lips cover band. This isn’t her first time working with the band, and when they co-produce they opt for full-on synthpop shimmer. They smother tracks like Tangerine in processed sounds indebted to 80s pop and the Flaming Lips’ own unhinged psychpop. Miley Cyrus: Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz album stream

You get the impression that although Bangerz was painted as Cyrus’s break from the cutesy constraints of Hannah Montana and Disney, Dead Petz really allows her to experiment. She’s making Hype Machine-ready synthpop rather than acting out a pseudo-twerking, tongue-wagging rap caricature that courts the charts. Quoting her own team of advisers, in a New York Times profile about the making of Dead Petz, Cyrus said they had “never seen someone at my level, especially a woman, have this much freedom. I literally can do whatever I want. It’s insane.”

And she’s right. This album is definitely too long, and starts to meander into bonus-track territory just over the halfway mark, but marks an important signpost in her career. It’s hard to imagine many other artists signed to Disney’s Hollywood Records label who could convincingly make music that flirts with Metronomy-style bassline riffing (on cunnilingus anthem Bang Me Box) and then sounds like Die Antwoord or a PC Music reject on 46-second interlude I’m So Drunk. Unlike Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and other former Nickelodeon or Disney performers, Cyrus has been afforded the privilege of collaborating with producers and musicians who let her make whatever the hell she wants. Even her label, RCA, aren’t fussed. Dead Petz won’t count towards her multi-album deal with them, but they’ve happily let her skip off and do it, saying they’re “pleased to support Miley’s unique musical vision”, in a statement to the New York Times.

You may not have the patience to set aside an hour and a half for Cyrus singing about her past hook-ups, clingy lovers, and dead pet dog and blowfish – especially when this psychpop mish-mash slips close to lyrical self-parody during its most frank moments. But there’s a sweetness to her naivety. After a childhood lived in the spotlight, Dead Petz feels like the first time Cyrus has truly let her guard down in song, Wrecking Ball and all. She’s mastering her voice, belting it out on closer Twinkle Song or letting it crack with emotion on Pablow the Blowfish, and doing so on her own terms. In her corner of the industry, that’s saying something.

Miley Cyrus: 'I don’t relate to being boy or girl'

Miley Cyrus has revealed that she told her mum she was bisexual at the age of 14. The singer also claimed that her religious parents, who she describes at one point as “conservative ass motherfuckers”, found it difficult to accept at first.

Miley Cyrus … Psychedelic warrior.

“I remember telling her I admire women in a different way. And she asked me what that meant. And I said, I love them. I love them like I love boys,” Miley said to Paper Mag.

The Wrecking Ball star, who was breaking out as Disney star Hannah Montana at the time, added: “It was so hard for her to understand. She didn’t want me to be judged and she didn’t want me to go to hell. But she believes in me more than she believes in any god. I just asked for her to accept me. And she has.”

Back in May, Cyrus gave an interview to promote her Happy Hippie Foundation, which strives to help homeless and LGBT youth, in which she said that not all of her relationships had been “straight, heterosexual ones”.

But in this most recent interview, Cyrus explains that she is open to a variety of sexual relationships. She said: “I am literally open to every single thing that is consenting and doesn’t involve an animal and everyone is of age. Everything that’s legal, I’m down with. Yo, I’m down with any adult - anyone over the age of 18 who is down to love me. I don’t relate to being boy or girl, and I don’t have to have my partner relate to boy or girl.”

Cyrus adds that she’s had past relationships with women, but that they haven’t been brought into the media spotlight like her relationships with men.

Elsewhere in the interview, Cyrus says that she was inspired to set up a homeless charity after accepting the huge disparity between her life and the lives of others. She said: “I can’t drive by in my fucking Porsche and not fucking do something. I see it all day: people in their Bentleys and their Rolls and their Ubers, driving past these vets who have fought for our country, or these young women who have been raped. I was doing a show two nights ago, and I was wearing butterfly nipple pasties and butterfly wings. I’m standing there with my tits out, dressed like a butterfly. How the fuck is that fair? How am I so lucky?”

Wednesday 20 January 2016

Miley Cyrus Biography

Famous as : Actress, singer
Birth Name : Destiny Hope Cyrus
Birth Date : November 23, 1992
Birth Place : Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Claim to Fame : As Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana in TV series "Hannah Montana" (2006)

Kết quả hình ảnh cho about Miley Cyrus


Born to country singer-actor Billy Ray Cyrus and his wife Leticia "Tish" Cyrus, she was given the name Destiny Hope Cyrus upon her parents' thought that she would accomplish great things in life. Frequently smiling as a youngster, she then obtained the nickname of "Miley," which was directed from the word "smiley." And so, people began to notice the young, beautiful, and talented star simply as Miley Cyrus.

She would later on change her birth name to Miley Ray Cyrus in honor of her father. Born in Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville, on November 23, 1992, the girl was raised on her parents' farm in the backwoods of Nashville. She initially attended Heritage Middle School before then had a private tutor. She has a younger brother, Braison, and a younger sister, Noah Lindsey Cyrus, who is also an actress, in addition to two older half-brothers, Christopher Cody and Trace, and an older half-sister named Brandi.

Finding herself interested in acting at mere age of nine, Miley had her acting debut in an episode of her father's television series "Doc" in 2003, playing the guest role of a girl named Kylie. The same year she landed a small role in Tim Burton's film direction "Big Fish" in which she played the Young Ruthie.

Developing an interest in music prior to her acting career, Miley who began writing songs and learning to sing while still a preteen, got a chance to explore her music skills as she was tapped to be featured in Rhonda Vincent's music video for "If Heartaches Have Wings" and to appear on "Colgate Country Showdown," a TV program which her father was hosting.

It was not until she was cast in the title role of the Disney Channel's original series, "Hannah Montana", that she gained her nationwide popularity for playing a teenage girl leading a double life. She was 12 when she came to the audition of the TV series. Besides landing her eyes on the titular character, Miley aimed for the best friends role but because she was deemed too small by the executives, she failed the first round. Nevertheless, the execs changed their mind and cast the girl who "loves every minute of her life" as Hannah Montana.

In the TV show she plays Miley Stewart, an average teenage girl dealing with school, friends, siblings, and all the other peculiarity of life for a 14-years-old and all at once as Hannah Montana, a multi-platinum pop star whose career was guided by her successful songwriter father Robby Stewart who had to keep her "double faces" secret from the public other than her close friends and family.
Debuted on Disney Channel on March 24, 2006, the children's TV series quickly became an immediate success among viewers and was soon followed with the release of a soundtrack CD, "Hannah Montana," on October 24 via Walt Disney Records. The set featured Miley as Hannah Montana, singing eight songs from the show along with five related tracks, including a duet with her father Billy Ray on "I Learned from You" which appeared the last on the album. The compilation was another success, chosen the eighth best selling album of the year in the U.S., with nearly 2 million copies sold and approximately 3.2 million copies sold worldwide.

The actress-singer spent the rest of the year serving as the opening act for the girl group The Cheetah Girls on 20 dates of their 39-cities tour. In March the following year, "Hannah Montana" was reissued in a special edition featuring a bonus DVD, not long after the show's theme song, "The Best of Both Worlds," was released as a single.

Miley had her first LP, a double album titled "Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus," hit the market on June 26, 2007. Debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 326,000 copies sold during its first week of sales, the set sold about 1.5 million copies worldwide by mid-year and thus was certified Platinum for sales of 1.5 million copies.

In the peak of her career, scandal hit when a series of her racy pictures leaked out on the Internet. As a role model for teens, Miley was criticized for setting a bad example. This would be put on scrutiny more when she posed for Vanity Fair half-naked although she apologized later on.

Due to the enormous success, Miley was granted the title of the 59th "Most Influential People" list made and released by Time magazine in May 2008 as well as the #35 "2008 Forbes Celebrity 100" with an estimated earnings of $25 million during June 2007 to June 2008. Her wax figure on Madame Tussauds was also unveiled in March 2008.

Miley's career was just in the making though. A plan on big screen version of Hannah Montana was quickly developed and Miley, reprising her role will star in "Hannah Montana: The Movie". Before the movie project came to public, Miley released a second studio album called "Breakout" which first single "7 Things" made an impressive chart performance. A song about an attack to her ex, it entered at #84 on Billboard Hot 100 before climbing up to #10 in its third week.
During her Disney days, Miley met other child stars like the Jonas Brothers, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. She dated the young JoBros, Nick Jonas. After splitting from Nick, she moved on with underwear model Justin Gaston but their relationship didn't last long. In 2009 while filming "The Last Song", she met Liam Hemsworth and later became his girlfriend. In June 2012, the couple announced their engagement. Though being repeatedly hit with breakup rumors, they were still together by mid-year of 2013.

Two years after "Breakout", Miley released a more mature album appropriately titled "Can't Be Tamed" in an effort to shed her squeaky-clean image. It peaked at No. 3 on Hot 200 with the title track reaching No. 8 on Hot 100. Then, came a tour to promote the album and so she was busy traveling North America for live concerts.

She was back on the big screen with "LOL" and "So Undercover" in 2012, but it didn't really perform well partly because of the lack of promotion on the movie studio's part. Slowly but sure, her new album came together. While working on it, she treated fans by guesting on other artists' songs including Snoop Dogg's "Ashtrays and Heartbreaks" and will.i.am's "Fall Down".

Her fourth album is yet to be titled, but already she offered a solid introduction with lead single "We Can't Stop", which became her second-highest charting single after 2009's "Party in the U.S.A." The music video broke the Vevo record for most views in 24 hours, garnering 10.7 million views and beating out Justin Bieber's "Beauty and a Beat" release with 10.6 million views.










How Miley Cyrus Buried Hannah Montana and Reinvented Herself: Why She Can't—and Shouldn't—Be Stopped!


Miley Cyrus killed Hannah Montana using a potent combination of sexuality, foam fingers and marijuana. And it happened right in front of our eyes.

Her transformation began exactly two years ago, when she caused international outrage by twerking her butt off against Robin Thicke's crotch during the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance came across as desperate, a suggestion that she was willing to do anything to break free from the shackles of her Disney-sweetheart alter ego.

But two years later, as she gears up to host tonight's VMAs ceremony, we know how wrong we were. It has become remarkably clear that Miley is much smarter than anyone initially gave her credit for.


Scott Gries/Invision/AP

She may have stuck a fork in Hannah Montana that night, but she reinvented Miley Cyrus.

Here are five things we're loving about Miley 2.0:


Ethan Miller/Getty Images for Clear Channel

She Outwitted Her Critics:

For a while, Miley's spree of candid marijuana talk, twerking and tongue-wagging gave the impression she needed to come with a permanent NC-17 warning. And we weren't the only ones who thought so. In her recent New York Times interview, Miley admitted: "People that I really loved and thought were my friends judged me for it. They were like, ‘You were on drugs when you did that performance.' I did nothing! I still don't get it."

But Miley decided to use the harsh response to her advantage: "I knew who I was, and I knew the power that I held, but I don't think I realized my full power until that show," she told the NYT. "I didn't realize I could make such a big reaction. I didn't think that many people would care. I knew I was famous, but I didn't know what that meant. Everything was coming to an end and starting a new beginning. In every way."

A friend of Miley's explains to E! News, "She has a big picture view of everything. It's all perfectly planned out. She is very aware of what she is doing and how it's going to be perceived publicly. She knows her own mind very well."


Courtesy Paola Kudacki/Paper Magazine

She's 100 Percent Comfortable in Her Own Skin (and Nothing but Her Skin):

When Miley posed for her Paper Magazine cover shoot in June, you'd be forgiven for thinking she was just trying to copy Kim Kardashian (who memorably attempted to #BreakTheInternet with her oiled-up derriere). The reality is, Miley's shoot was worlds apart. Her choice of prop (a snorting farm animal rather than a burst of champagne) aside, there was a deeper meaning to it.

She sometimes wants to look a mess. Rather than try to be traditionally sexy, she covered herself in grubby mud. The message is clear, even if the choice of body paint is not: I am comfortable with me and I don't give a s--t what you think.

It was quite refreshing, considering we live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by picture-perfect celebrities, whether it's Taylor Swift dressed impeccably every time she leaves her apartment or Reese Witherspoon working out without a bead of sweat on her brow.

"She's very real," says a Miley source. "She doesn't aspire to be a pretty princess. That doesn't matter to her. It's more important to be authentic."
Larry Busacca/Getty Images

She Knows Her Worth When It Comes to Love:

When Miley started dating Patrick Schwarzenegger, she unwittingly became a half of the hope for a Brangelina 2.0, young-Hollywood edition. Here was the bad girl snagging the clean-cut good boy. It was an unexpected union and they looked hot together, Miley being an entirely worthy member of the political dynasty and yet someone who might raise a few eyebrows among the Kennedy set.

But six months ago, Patrick was snapped living it up a little too much with bikini clad members of the opposite sex while on spring break and the dream romanceunraveled fast. Miley had enough self-confidence to know she could do better. Patrick denied engaging in any inappropriate behavior on his vacation, but...why would Miley want to even lose a night's sleep (or, better yet, a night's partying) wondering?

"She learned her lesson from previous relationships," says a friend. "Now she has a better sense of what she needs and who she deserves." Not to say that Miley's self-absorbed. "Far from it," the friend added. "It's just that she has learned to really value herself and expects the same from the people around her."

Damn straight!

Since that very public split, Miley has been linked to various people, including Victoria's Secret model Stella Maxwell. Miley told Elle UK: "I'm 22, I'm going on dates, but I change my style every two weeks, let alone who I'm with."


Instagram/Twitter

She Gets Off Her Ass and Gets Out There:

And we don't just mean she works out to maintain her ridiculous bod. At the 2014 VMAs, Miley ditched the foam finger and used her new platform to take a 22-year-old homeless man with a troubled past as her date. And when she won Video of the Year for "Wrecking Ball," it was Jesse Helt who took those tentative steps up to the podium to accept the award on her behalf.

Rather than just walk a red carpet or lend her name to something, she knows the real power of her fame and how to share it. Earlier this year she launched theHappy Hippie Foundation to help homeless, LGBT and otherwise vulnerable young people who need support to get back on their feet.

Says our source: "She is incredibly socially conscious, more so than her peers. She really does know how famous she is. Not in an egotistical way, but she knows she has a voice and is in a privileged position."

Miley is determined to use her fame for a deeper purpose. And while most of us do not have the platform she has, she is inspiring. "If I'm going to be noticed by this many people, what am I really going to say?" she explained to the NYT about her metamorphosis. "What I want to say isn't 'shake your ass.' But even if you listen to 'Can't Stop,' it isn't how I'd say it now, but it is still saying the same thing: 'I'm going to do whatever I want.' Now I know how to say that in my own words, not just in the way that's a hit."


Rocstar/FAMEFLYNET PICTURES

She Can Be Anything She Wants to Be:

Miley is the new normal. Or should be, at least. In her Paper interview, she was very clear about who she is and her philosophy that anything goes. "I don't relate to being boy or girl, and I don't have to have my partner relate to boy or girl," she said.

Instead, she describes herself as pansexual, meaning she's open to wherever her attractions lead her, regardless of sexuality or gender identity. By being honest about who she is, she is hoping she can encourage others to do the same and she's helped blaze the trail for others to do the same. She's teaching her generation that you don't need a label to have an identity and she's leading by example.

Overall, Miley is redefining what it means to be a celebrity. She is the opposite of the seemingly perfect role models like Taylor. She's raw and in your face. She doesn't have a slew of supermodel girlfriends, and she doesn't always look perfect. Her Instagram feed stands out: There are no touch-ups, her camera angles and lighting can suck. She is more interested in inserting random pictures of pizza, making her own memes and showing off the underarm hair she sports from time to time.

Growing up is hard enough, but doing it in front of the world is far harder. Two years ago, we misinterpreted Miley. We believed her outrageous behavior was a sign of being out of control. But ultimately she was more in control than we could have imagined.

And if you aren't convinced yet, prepare to eat your critical words because the pot-loving rebel who wears pasties on Jimmy Kimmel Live! is on course to become one of the most influential leaders of her generation.

She will not be stopped.

Miley Cyrus and the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne Close a Generation Gap

The collaboration between the rock band the Flaming Lips and the pop singer Miley Cyrus has so far yielded, among other things, a cover of the Beatles classic “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”; a trippy short film titled “Blonde SuperFreak Steals the Magic Brain”; matching torso tattoos; and a recently released album, “Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz,” inspired by the singer’s affection for animals.


Music critics have done some head-scratching over the results. But in the unlikely partnership between the band’s frontman, Wayne Coyne, who is 54, and Ms. Cyrus, who is 23, the amateur sociologist sees a golden opportunity to examine the generational divide.

A few recent articles have suggestedtension between the two groups. The older demographic (born roughly from 1961 to 1980) bristles at what it perceives as an entitled attitude and constant need to be praised; the millennials (born from 1980 to 2000) seem dismayed by X-ers’ skeptical worldview and preference for antiquated forms of communication like email.

Might the BFF status between Mr. Coyne and Ms. Cyrus hold a key to intergenerational harmony? Reached by phone in the Midwest, where he was on break from touring with “Cyrus,” as he often referred to her, Mr. Coyne gamely considered the matter.

“I think because I’m so old and because she’s so young, we reach around and meet in back,” Mr. Coyne said. “As opposed to her being slightly behind, or me being slightly ahead, in years. Then it would get confused.”

He first met Ms. Cyrus when she was 20 or 21, he said, and was unsure how well they would work together in the studio. The former child star is famously outspoken, although Mr. Coyne doesn’t attribute that to a generational trait so much as to her youth and celebrity.

“Everybody who’s 20 or 21 owns the world anyway,” he said. “And then if you’re Miley Cyrus, you really own the world. For some reason, we seemed to know things about each other, enough to know we’d like each other. She works the way I do. We both have the same quality of saying, ‘Yes.’”

Mr. Coyne told Billboard that Ms. Cyrus was “probably influencing us more than we’ll be able to influence her,” because her endless energy and lack of a self-censoring filter were a benefit to the Flaming Lips, a band that has been together more than 30 years.

Indeed, the band is currently promoting a 20th-anniversary remastered edition of “Clouds Taste Metallic” — an album released when Ms. Cyrus was 2

So is Mr. Coyne saying that aging, self-questioning Gen X-ers can get a creative jolt from pairing up with millennials?Continue reading the main story

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“A lot of things that ended up being on the ‘Dead Petz’ record, I was there when she was making it up,” Mr. Coyne said. “I’d ask, ‘Are you embarrassed by that?’ But that’s what’s powerful about it. She doesn’t have any filter. There’s no reason to have any filter. It’s so badass.”

One area where Mr. Coyne is unlikely to follow Ms. Cyrus’s example is in the sex department. Although “Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz,” like much of her recent music, is overtly sexual, with single-entendre song titles like “Bang Me Box,” Mr. Coyne said he can’t imagine himself applying the same frank sexuality to Flaming Lips music and live performances.

“When it’s her being sexy, I think it works great,” he said.

As for himself?

“I’m doing the best I can, I’ll say that.”

The Most Hilariously Absurd Rumors + Conspiracy Theories About Miley Cyrus

I love everything about Miley Cyrus: Her twerking! Her overt love for pizza! Her penchant for wearing next to nothing! It’s all so refreshing compared to the prim-and-proper pop tarts she calls her peers.

A few people see Miley’s bizarre antics as ill-advised rebellion. She’s off her rocker! Going on a downward spiral! Someone call 911…and the church! However, if youreally know Ms. Cyrus, she knows exactly what she is doing. In fact, she is more in control of her career than ever before—creating a safe space where we can truly let our freak flags fly. And cheers to that.

But those naysayers sure like to flap their gums. Because of that, ridiculous rumors about Miley pop up left and right all over the Web. One day, she’s a demon. The next day, she’s pregnant. And then before you know it, she’s dead. That escalated quickly.

Here are the seven craziest “news” items we found on the Internet about Lady Cyrus. We hope Miley (who turns 23 today!) finds them as funny as we do.

She was replaced by a body double in 2010.


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2010 marked a new era in Miley’s career. She bid adieu to kiddy Hannah Montanafare and proudly announced she could not be tamed. To some, this noticeably sexier image was just the natural progression in the pop star’s career. Others (i.e.: the person who wrote this article) have a different theory: The OG Miley was murdered—possibly by Disney!—and replaced with a Miley clone. And this clone doesn’t give a crap about being a role model to your pre-teen girl. She twerks! She sticks her tongue out! She does clone things! THE HUMANITY.
She is pregnant with Justin Bieber’s baby.


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A Miley rumor list isn’t complete without a least one “pregnancy.” This little nugget popped up in April. According to the journalistic-as-hell In Touch Weekly, Miley was pregnant with sir Bieber’s child. And the plot thickens: At the same time, Justin’s exSelena Gomez was also pregnant. Jeez. So much conceiving. Miley laughed off the rumors by posting the tabloid headline, “Miley & Selena: Pregnant by the Same Man” and captioning it, “And by the same man we mean Justin Bieber” on Instagram. So, we’re just making s–t up now, I guess?

She is in the Illuminati because of the number 23.

The number 23 is very important to Illuminati members. Why? I don’t know. Probably something scary. Because Miley guest appeared on Mike WiLL Made It’s single “23” in 2013, the Internet put two and two together. Lady Cyrus has to be in the group then! And here’s some more compelling evidence: Miley was born on Nov.23, 1992. The second season of Hannah Montana premiered April 23, 2007. Mike confirmed Miley would appear on the song on May 23, 2013. Coincidence?! I mean…yeah, probably.

She has eight very strict rules for potential baes.


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We couldn’t find a report where Miley outwardly denied this, but we have a hard time believing someone as sexually fluid as her would have these militant dating requirements. A few of the highlights: 1. Attend a “pre-dating” briefing with her assistant. 2. Your outfit color must be approved pre-date so it won’t clash with Miley’s. 3. You must look like a model, six-pack included. In other words, me as heck.

She broke up Lupita Nyong’o and Jared Leto.


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Lupita and Jared allegedly started getting cozy during the 2014 awards season, but they were intercepted by Miley. When Ellen DeGeneres asked Lupita about the romance, she joked about the Ms. Cyrus-fueled rumors. “Ah, but I thought Miley Cyrus broke us up, that was the last thing I heard,” she said. Zing-zing!

She wants to have devil horns implanted onto her head.


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Every Illuminati member needs a good pair of devil horns, right? Apparently In Touch Weekly thought so, because they reported a while back Miley wanted “silicone devil horns” implanted in her head. Miley laughed off this brouhaha, posting on Instagram, “lol lol lol lol lol believe EVERYTHING you read! It’s all true!” Damn. This actually would’ve been pretty cool.

She and Beyoncé are recruiting kids for Satan worship.

And the only piece of evidence for this? They stick out their tongues and gyrate a little. Yep. That’s literally it. Good story, guys.

My Oh Miley! America's baddest bad girl doesn't care what you think of her.

“She’s cool, she’s scandalous,” Kristal, an apple-cheeked 13-year-old, shouts over the din. “I like her hair,” adds Morgan, a 12-year-old standing next to her. “She’s a slut,” declares Kaylee, a sullen 14-year-old with a fading magenta dye job and a mouthful of bubble gum. “I’m here for Ariana Grande.” For all I know, she’s referring to a Microsoft Word font or a new kind of latte. This is not my scene. I am in the oppressive mayhem at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, packed on this December night for the Jingle Ball, a concert series featuring of-the-moment pop artists. Kristal and Morgan are Smilers, as Miley Cyrus diehards call themselves. Some carry a torch for Hannah Montana, the Disney Channel role that made her a star. Others favor the edgier persona introduced with her 2013 album, Bangerz. But all are fiercely devoted, waiting hours for a glimpse of Cyrus.

Kết quả hình ảnh cho about Miley Cyrus
Onstage, the lights dim. Red sequins flash through a smoke-machine haze. Cyrus, in a spangled two-piece ensemble hiked high enough to require intensive bikini waxing, steps out. Behind her, a tall black woman sways in a Christmas tree costume that Cyrus will later overturn, pointing at the women’s rear end and impishly wagging her tongue at the audience. Next to her, a little person prances in a silver leotard with conical foam breasts. Cyrus kneels and squeezes them playfully. Eighteen thousand audience members explode into unhinged jubilation. “Oh, my God,” Kristal shrieks, near tears. “I love her!”

“I don’t love kids,” a tired Cyrus tells me the night before the concert, ashing a cigarette. We’re in her living room, sitting in front of a white stone mid-century-modern fireplace. There are three fireplaces in her mansion in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, which is sequestered behind high gates and monitored by countless security cameras. The fire throws shadows across Cyrus’s languorous form, now draped over an uncomfortable-looking Tulip chair. A black and white striped Chanel T-shirt hangs slack on her thin frame. With pageboy bangs falling over her makeup-free face, the performer looks vulnerable, childlike. Only the word bad in bold red on her right middle finger—one of her 21 tattoos at last count—betrays the puckish impresario she will be onstage the next night. She has just turned 21.

I begin to respond, but Cyrus is not listening. “I don’t love them because, I mean, I think I was around too many kids at one point—because I was around a lot of kids.”

A conversation with Cyrus plays more like a breakneck stream-of-consciousness soliloquy. She’s Molly Bloom—the character who closes James Joyce’s Ulysses with a chapter of unpunctuated run-on sentences—for the Instagram set. She rarely draws a breath. Cyrus speaks in the language of her generation: She is a human text message.

Cyrus speaks in the language of her generation: She is a human text message.

“They’re so fucking mean,” she continues. “Sometimes I hear kids with their parents, and I want to go over and, like, smack them myself…Like if they meet me, they’ll be like, ‘Mom, don’t you know how to use an iPhone? Like, can you take the picture?’ I’m like, ‘Dude, if I ever talked to my mom like that when I was a kid, I would have had no phone, no computer, no TV, no anything.’ And so, yeah, kids are just mean.”

Cyrus gets a lot of mean these days. She has 16.7 million followers on Twitter, and every day her feed is deluged with slurs. (Cyrus: “I. Hate. Packing.” Twitter response: “GET CANCER.”) She is the personification of a new generation of fame. She both courts and bears the costs of an ever more intrusive media; of a public ravenous for that intrusiveness; and of a networked world that has placed all of us, celebrity or not, under the microscope. Cyrus lowers her voice conspiratorially and tells me, “I think with, like, Instagram, Twitter, whatever, everyone is a paparazzi now. How scary is that? Like, you’re never safe.” Even ordinary people, Cyrus says, “just think they can, like, talk about you like they know you. Especially because I grew up in it, and like you grew up in it, too, there’s a sense of entitlement.” She’s not wrong about the parallels: both of us raised by performers, both driven to work in the spotlight on our own terms.

See Miley Cyrus’s most memorable Instagram moments here.

Cyrus thrived in that spotlight early, first as the daughter of the famed country singer Billy Ray Cyrus. Destiny Hope, as Miley was christened, was born in 1992, the year Billy Ray’s “Achy Breaky Heart” topped the charts. On a 500-acre farm in Franklin, Tennessee, she and her five siblings spent long summer days outdoors. “We never were inside, and we never wore shoes,” she recalls. “I think it’s why I like wearing no clothes so much and I’m always naked.” Cyrus is close to her mother, Tish, who manages her career. “I never had, like, a nanny that took care of me,” Cyrus recounts. “My mom always fed me breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” But her parents also served as an example of what not to do, starting with trusting too easily. “My dad, like, he’s the most trusting human in the world,” she says. “He trusts everybody, basically, until they fuck him over. And my mom, too, holds no grudges. She’s really like it’s the—you know, shame on—” Cyrus pauses, a rare occurrence. She furrows her brow. “What is it? ‘Shame on me’?…or whatever.”

“Fool me once—?” I offer, but Cyrus is talking again.

“She’ll let someone, like, fuck her over twice, and then she’ll let it go, and then she kind of forgets about it. And I used to be like that. And now I just keep it in the back of my mind.”

Other influences from Cyrus’s pre-fame years include her grandfather Ron Cyrus, a Kentucky state legislator who inspired a counterculture streak (“To be a Democrat in a superconservative state, it can be crazy because people look at you like you’re some type of sinner,” she says) and Dolly Parton, Cyrus’s godmother. (“What I love about Dolly is she says hi to the person that’s doing the catering on set before she goes and says hi to the cast.”)

By age 9, Cyrus had already won a spotlight of her own, appearing in a bit part in her father’s television program, Doc. Three years later, at 12, she landed the TV role that would make her a star: every girl in America’s best friend, Hannah Montana. Lee Shallat Chemel, who cast Cyrus in that role, recalls that the child actor was green but game. “I didn’t see drivenat that point,” she muses. “I did see very open and very willing to go.” And go she did. Cyrus became one of Disney’s most profitable, most merchandized stars. The Hannah Montana franchise earned the company $1 billion over the course of its run from 2006 to 2011.

But fame brought increasingly harsh judgment. In 2008, a 15-year-old Cyrus scandalized her audience by wearing what appeared to be nothing but a sheet in photographs shot by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. (“I feel so embarrassed,” Cyrus said at the time. “I apologize to my fans, who I care so deeply about.”) The following year, a video of her pole dancing at an awards show prompted a collective clutching of pearls. Not long after, she found herself in the headlines again when a videotape of her taking a hit from a bong made the rounds online.

Public interest in Cyrus’s personal image has never faltered; but for a spell, her ability to capitalize on it did. Her 2010 album with Disney, Can’t Be Tamed,proved her least successful. Fitful attempts to kick-start her acting career sputtered. Then 2013 arrived, and with it, a radically reinvented image—no apologies necessary. Gyrating in a flesh-tone latex bikini for her infamous performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, swinging naked on a wrecking ball in her most popular music video, and providing a drip-feed of intimate selfies via social media, Cyrus laid siege to public consciousness. At the close of the year, she was the most Googled person in America.

Cyrus also reinvented her music. She hired a new music manager, Larry Rudolph, famous for orchestrating Britney Spears’s controversy-laden career. She assembled a powerhouse team of producers, including reliable hitmakers Pharrell Williams and Doctor Luke and up-and-comer Mike WiLL Made It. This, too, paid off. Bangerz topped the Billboard 200, and Cyrus has been earning mounting critical respect. “They did a write-up inRolling Stone—like, the best albums of 2013,” Cyrus says, taking a drag of her cigarette. “And my album was one of them! I printed it out. I give myself things to look at like that.”

Cyrus insists that her provocative image is calculated. In part, she tells me, it’s a response to what she sees as a lack of authenticity in her peer group. “I just don’t get what half the girls are wearing. Everyone to me seems like Vanna White. I’m trying to tell girls, like, ‘Fuck that. You don’t have to wear makeup. You don’t have to have long blonde hair and big titties. That’s not what it’s about. It’s, like, personal style.’ I like that I’m associated with sexuality and the kind of punk-rock shit where we just don’t care. Like Madonna or Blondie or Joan Jett—Jett’s the one that I still get a little shaky around. She did what I did in such a crazier way. I mean, girls then weren’t supposed to wear leather pants and, like, fucking rock out. And she did.”

But Jett didn’t grow up in the age of social media. Cyrus is often under fire, and not all of it is senseless Twitter bullying. Recently, she has weathered more-serious claims that she exploits her minority backup dancers, like the black woman in her Jingle Ball show.

The Guardian called her use of black dancers and the focus on their rear ends “a minstrel show.” A column on the culture website Jezebel.com, viewed more than 746,000 times, accused Cyrus of “accessorizing with black people.” Amazon Ashley, the burlesque performer who is featured in Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop” video and wore the Christmas tree costume, defends the performances. “I say, ‘Bah, humbug’ to that,” she says of critics. “Miley treats me with the utmost respect. Twerking is my act. It’s what I enjoy; it’s who I am.”

Cyrus’s use of little people has stirred even deeper rancor. Hollis Jane, who appeared dressed as a teddy bear in Cyrus’s VMA performance, wrote afterward that “standing on that stage, in that costume was one of the most degrading things—I was being looked at as a prop, as something less than human.” Brittney Guzman, the little person who was hired after Jane’s departure and appeared in Cyrus’s Jingle Ball performance, dismisses Jane’s complaints as a ploy for attention. She says Cyrus’s handling of her body comes from a place of sisterly affection. “When she grabs my boobs, we’re just having fun,” she says. “It’s not degrading.” She tells me the routine mimics their offstage rapport. After shows, “sometimes she’ll touch my boob, and she’ll be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I just wanted to grab it’…Or she’ll be like, ‘Next time I’m going to grab your ass…’cause Brittney has the biggest booty.’ ”

“I’m not Disney, where they have an asian girl, a black girl, and a white girl wearing bright-colored t-shirts.”
When asked about the criticism, Cyrus simply says, “I don’t give a shit. I’m not Disney, where they have, like, an Asian girl, a black girl, and a white girl, to be politically correct, and, like, everyone has bright-colored T-shirts. You know, it’s like, I’m not making any kind of statement. Anyone that hates on you is always below you, because they’re just jealous of what you have.” Cyrus seems to have developed a preternatural ability to tune things out. (“I have a hard time listening,” she concedes.) That goes for both criticism and other people. “I have a lot of people that I could call and hang out with, but I have very few friends, if that makes any sense,” she tells me. “Like, I just don’t tell a lot of people anything. Everyone’s always like, ‘You’re so sketch.’ ”

She admits that her reluctance to trust has made dating fraught since she and the 24-year-old Australian actor Liam Hemsworth ended their one-year engagement last September. “Guys watch too much porn,” she confides, absently prodding a bedazzled iPhone. “Those girls don’t exist. They’re not real girls. And that’s like us watching romance movies. That’s girl porn, because, like, those guys do not exist.” The kind that do exist, she continues, “just try too hard with me, and it’s just like, ‘I don’t need you to impress me. I don’t want you to, like, take me to fancy restaurants.’ I hate sitting down for dinner!” Cyrus’s tone begins to sound accusing, though I’ve taken her to no meals, seated or otherwise. “You don’t have to do that to me! You don’t have to take me on trips! I literally just want to chill here!”

She collects herself: “That’s why I’m, like, not trying to jump into a relationship…I love my music so much, and I love what I’m doing so much that that has become my other half—rather than another person. And so, yeah, I feel like I had to be able to be 100 percent—oh, Hi, Maya.”

A petite Asian woman has shuffled to Cyrus’s side.

“I’m doing a little interview,” Cyrus tells her. “But you can set up right here if you want.”

She turns back to me. “This is Maya. She does my nails.”

“I never leave the house,” Cyrus explains. “Why go to a movie? I’ve got a huge-ass TV. We’ve got a chef here that can make you great food. We don’t need to leave. I would just rather be here where I’m completely locked in.”

I glance around the room. The sun is setting over Los Angeles, the last shafts of light creeping across the dark-stained oak floor. The modern decor is punctuated by the occasional New Age detail, like the giant Buddha head in the driveway fountain. In the garage are Cyrus’s motorcycle, a white Mercedes S class, a Porsche, and a Maserati—but with the paparazzi outside, Cyrus says, exits require planning.

She betrays a note of yearning when I mention I’m about to depart for an assignment in Kenya.

“I want to go to Kenya,” she says.

I tell her to come: “No joke. You could do it.”

“Kenya’s my dream,” she says. “Kenya is my total dream. I wish I wasn’t going to be in Minneapolis next week, I wish I could be in Kenya.”

Her imagination is running riot now. “I want to go to Iceland,” she says.

“Yes!” I agree. “I’ve never been.”

“Let’s do an Iceland trip…and I want to go to Norway…Someone said the light there is just so beautiful…”

If Cyrus makes it to Kenya or Iceland or Norway, it probably won’t be for adventure. And it definitely won’t be soon. This year will be spent crisscrossing America and Europe for her Bangerz tour, which commenced mid-February. “I love being on, like, the road,” she says, brightening. “I just want to make music.”

Music is the one context in which I witness Cyrus listening exquisitely, deeply, wholly. When I tell her that I’ve worked as a singer-songwriter, she asks to hear my collaboration with a musician whose material she has covered. She clutches my phone’s tinny speaker to her ear for three and a half minutes. “This chorus is dope,” she says, her head nodding to the beat. “’Cause the verses are more poppy but cool, and the chorus sounds so old-school…” In a few minutes of music, she asks me more questions than she has in hours of conversation: about lyrics, melody, inspirations.

Cyrus’s own influences stand in stark contrast to the hyperproduced pop of Bangerz. Later, we pore over her vinyl collection, dusting off psychedelic rock courtesy of her favorite band, Pink Floyd, and standards by Dolly Parton, Bobby Vinton, and Irma Thomas. In 2012 Cyrus recorded a series of what she refers to as “backyard sessions” with her band, showcasing powerhouse vocals on standards like Parton’s “Jolene.” At the mention of a recent hit by one prominent pop princess, Cyrus wrinkles up her nose. “Oh, God! That’s the worst. I couldn’t imagine you doing an album that sounds like that.” Even as a child, she had a singular creative confidence. She recalls fighting with a producer from her Disney days because she thought he was “selling out.” I was like, ‘Why the fuck are you doing this?’ ” She reduced both of them to tears, fighting “to a point where I’d be shaking. But I’m just intense like that.”

Part of her power, Cyrus feels, lies in having nothing left to prove. At 21, she’s managed to turn herself into a juggernaut twice over. “You know, I’ve made my money. If no one buys my album, cool. It’s fine. I’ve got a house, and I’ve got dogs that I love. I don’t need anything else,” she says. In her view, that’s a luxury that has carried the legends she most admires. “Maybe they succeed because they don’t have anything to prove. They’re just doing it because they love it. I hope I’m like Dolly—where I’m just still going at 75.”

Beyond music, Cyrus is expanding her interests. After her breakup, she tells me, she asked Diane Martel, the director responsible for Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” videos, to “just completely, like, drown me in new movies and books and art. I lived in Nashville, where that shit isn’t accessible.” We flip through a book of photographs by Cindy Sherman. “Check it,” she says as we arrive at Sherman’s Untitled #276, in which the artist poses as a kind of grungy Cinderella. “Lady Gaga completely ripped that off.” Cyrus is finding her taste in movies, too. She tells me she just watched the Tom Cruise 1990 dramaDays of Thunder three nights in a row. She’s also newly enamored with the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire. “I’m Blanche to a T, complete psycho,” she burbles cheerfully. I stare at her. I literally cannot imagine anyone less like Tennessee Williams’s fragile, lost Blanche DuBois. “Every time I watched her,” she goes on, “I was always like, ‘That’s me!’ ” If Cyrus is a Vivien Leigh performance, it’s Scarlett O’Hara in the early scenes of Gone With the Wind. She’s impetuous, beautiful, smarter than many give her credit for, slow to listen, quick to talk, adept at using her sexuality to her own ends.

As for the world beyond the arts, Cyrus is leery. “The news kind of gives me a little bit of anxiety,” she tells me. “So I’m less political.”

She’s loath even to join in the national conversation about the legalization of marijuana, though pot has become a centerpiece of her image. “I love weed,” she tells me. “I just love getting stoned.” But she’s less interested in policy than in quality control. “I just want it to be back to where it’s, like, organic, good weed.”

Trying to engage her in other current events, I come up empty-handed. When she tells me that at Thanksgiving with the Cyrus clan her brothers “literally got in a fight over, like, aliens,” I ask, “Immigration?”

“Yes. So he’s just—”

“Where did the family land on that?” I ask.

“Well, my older brother is obsessed with all those documentaries that have been banned. My brother’s convinced it’s the government not wanting us to know about aliens because the world would just, like, freak out—”

“Oh,” I say, realizing there’s been a misunderstanding. “Literal aliens.”

“—and so my younger brother is like, ‘That’s completely bogus.’ ”

“Tell your brother I worked for the government and saw no aliens.”

“I’m not so sure,” she says, telling me she once saw suspicious lights in the sky in the Bahamas. “My dad told me it was a satellite. But the way it zipped off was really weird.”

“I think it was a satellite,” I offer.

Despite her professed lack of interest in politics, Cyrus tells me she wants to have an impact onsomething. She runs through ideas in earnest. Animal welfare (“Like, all my dogs have been rescued and are amazing”), bullying (“I really want people not to be scared”), water purification (“I think water’s, like, a really important thing”), the environment (“I’m so scared the sky’s not going to be blue anymore. It’s going to be black from all the shit”). If there’s one thing Cyrus has, it’s time to figure out what she stands for.

I shut off my recorder and head for the heavy green front door. Its solid wood is sectioned off by four narrow panes of glass, now fogged, obscuring the outside world. I peer out and then open it. As I step into the chilly Los Angeles night, Cyrus calls after me. We had talked about favorite books, and now she asks me for a reading list. “Nothing too heavy,” she adds quickly. “Nothing boring.”
 

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