Miley Cyrus Demonstrates the Power of Context

Context: The general that lends meaning to the specific.

Yesterday, USA Today featured an article on Miley Cyrus.

According to the article, which discusses her upcoming promotional documentary, Miley Cyrus has no regrets about the way she’s behaving because her real goal is to make history.

“You want to make history. … Everything’s about what’s going to be the big moment in pop culture.“

Anytime you approach something single-mindedly and resolutely, there will be fall out.


In this case, Miley’s #1 context is to ‘make history’ and ‘be famous’.  That context dictates what she says, what she does, what she considers, and how she behaves. The fallout is that Miley Cyrus’ behavior is so outrageous and not respected that she is losing her moral authority as an artist (if she ever had it).

Her context means you can expect anything from her, as long as it’s so outrageous that she makes history. Our behavior has to fit our context. It doesn’t matter what people say or think, as long as Miley Cyrus is the one in the spotlight.

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.

“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?”

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)

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.