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The midnight sky is the road I'm taking
Head high up in the clouds
I was born to run, I don't belong to anyone
Oh no, I don't need to be loved by you
"Midnight Sky"

Miley Ray Cyrus (born Destiny Hope Cyrus on November 23, 1992) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She rose to prominence as a Teen Idol, best known as the star of the Disney Channel Kid Com Hannah Montana. She has received acclaim for her musical versatility and stylistic reinventions, to the extent of being dubbed a "pop chameleon", and has sold an estimated 20 million albums worldwide to date. She is also the daughter of country musician Billy Ray Cyrus.

As the star of Hannah Montana, Disney built an entire franchise around her with great results, arguably propelling her to the top of the Teen Idol heap. Along with the show, she also performed live as Hannah Montana and soon after embarked on her own solo music and acting career. Among her main musical inspirations are Britney Spears, Pat Benatar, Joan Jett, Stevie Nicks and Hilary Duff, the lattermost being cited by Miley as why she began singing and acting in the first place.

Although her music started out in a teen-friendly pop rock sound not dissimilar to her Disney character, she began presenting a more mature image with her third album, 2010's Can't Be Tamed, to mixed results. Following a hiatus, she released her next album, 2013's Bangerz, premiering a considerably more sexual image that made headlines, elicited controversy, and made for unprecedented commercial success alike. She has since gone on to experiment with psychedelic music, country pop, and glam-influenced rock.

In 2015, Cyrus came out as pansexual and genderfluidnote  following an interview with Out Magazine where she stated that she doesn't "relate to what people would say defines a girl or a boy". She later stated that she'd known she was attracted to girls since the age of 14 and that she was "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."

Filmography:

Discography:

As Hannah Montana

  • Hannah Montana (2006)
  • Hannah Montana 2 (2007)
  • Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert [live album] (2008)
  • Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009)
  • Hannah Montana 3 (2009)
  • Hannah Montana Forever (2010)

Studio Albums

  • Meet Miley Cyrus (2007)
  • Breakout (2008)
  • The Time of Our Lives [EP] (2009)
  • Can't Be Tamed (2010)
  • Bangerz (2013)
  • Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz (2015)
  • Younger Now (2017)
  • She Is Coming [EP] (2019)
  • Plastic Hearts (2020)
  • Endless Summer Vacation (2023)

Tours

  • Best Of Both Worlds Tour (2007-2008)
  • Wonder World Tour (2009)
  • Gypsy Heart Tour (2011)
  • Bangerz Tour (2014)
  • Milky Milky Milk Tour (2015)
  • Attention Tour (2022)

Other Roles:

  • The Voice (2016-17) — Part-time advisor of season 10, full-time coach of seasons 11 and 13


It's our party, we can trope what we want:

  • Anti-Love Song: "Can't Be Tamed" in the way "Oops!... I Did It Again" was.
  • Break-Up Song: "7 Things", "The Driveway", "Bottom Of the Ocean" (In interpretation), "These Four Walls", "Goodbye", "Talk is Cheap", "Two More Lonely People", "FU", "Someone Else", "Every Rose Has It's Thorn", "Take Me Along", "Wrecking Ball", "Slide Away", "Midnight Sky", "Flowers".
  • Child Popstar: Her earliest works were recorded when she was 12 years old.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Before her fame as a teen idol, she got a few cameos on her father's TV series, Doc.
  • Gay Aesop: "My Heart Beats for Love" is dedicated to her gay friend and has one of the most thorough messages that all love is love.
  • Genki Girl: Watch one of her appearances on any talk show. Chances are the host, no matter how experienced, will run into a point where he can't get in a word edgewise. This especially happens with particularly deep, personal, or highly-controversial topics, such as LGBT rights, her dating life, or her musical transformation.
  • Genre Roulette:
    • Within the style of teen-pop, her music takes on elements of pop, rock, dance, techno, country-pop, New Wave, hip-hop, power ballads, punk-pop...
    • Bangerz was the first significant shift from her previous albums, it was mostly a pop/R&B album with production from Pharrell Williams. Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz was an experimental, psychedelic rock album. Younger Now was a return to her country-pop roots, and Plastic Hearts is a rock/pop project.
  • Girlish Pigtails: She wears two bun knots for her MTV VMAs in 2013.
  • Genre Mashup:
    • "4X4" is a square dance pop-rap song.
    • Dead Petz contains a psychedelic rock/alternative/hip-hop/pop sound.
  • Green Aesop:
    • "Wake Up America" from Breakout, "1 Sun" from Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz,
    • The first verse of "Inspired" from Younger Now might also count.
  • Grief Song: "I Miss You"; "Pablow the Blowfish"; "Miss You So Much".
  • Heavenly Concentric Circles: In the music video of "Mother's Daughter", there's a mother breastfeeding her baby and wearing a crown of yellow flowers over a crown of golden spires arranged in a circle. Both elements are concentric and are meant to underlie the sanctity of motherhood. With this song. Cyrus is making a statement on sorority —that a supportive, healthy mother-daughter relationship is to be exalted.
  • Hidden Depths:
    • Many are surprised are how surprisingly nice and intelligent she is. She even started a charity called the "Happy Hippie Foundation", which is dedicated to homeless and LGBTQ youth.
    • Miley took piano lessons in order to play the classical piano pieces herself as Ronnie Miller in the film version of The Last Song.
  • "I Hate" Song: "7 Things", in which she sings about the seven things she hates about her ex. Although the final chorus subverts this by listing the seven things she likes about them.
  • In Da Club: "Bangerz" has this theme, as do "Midnight Sky" and "Night Crawling".
  • Important Haircut:
    • The punky, invokedblonde-dyed pixie-cut she adopted in June 2012 seemed to signal her full transformation from Disney pop star to a more mature image.
    • She would later grow out her hair and dye only the tips blonde, signaling her change to a Lighter and Softer country/folk sound and image (and newfound sobriety) for her "Malibu" single and seventh studio album, though she would cut her hair again, albeit it to a mullet than to a pixie cut in early 2020, following her separation from Liam Hemsworth.
  • Intentionally Awkward Title: "Fuckin Fucked Up", "FU", "WTF Do I Know".
  • Known Only by Their Nickname: Enforced when she made it her legal name.
  • "Leaving the Nest" Song: "Ready, Set, Don't Go" is a duet with Miley's father, Billy Ray Cyrus, about how she is ready to leave and have a future, while her father is struggling to accept that she's no longer a child.
  • Lyrical Dissonance: "Wrecking Ball" is a vulnerable Break Up Song whose accompanying video shows Miley strutting about in her underwear, suggestively licking a sledgehammer, and riding an actual wrecking ball while naked.
  • Maniac Tongue: Once she entered her less family-friendly phase, she became rather infamous for frequently showing off her tongue. She claims it makes her less nervous in public.
  • Music Is Politics: The look she adopted after Hannah Montana is clearly about selling records and shedding her old kiddy image.
  • Medley:
    • Cyrus performed a cover medley at The Gypsy Heart tour of "I Love Rock N Roll", "Cherry Bomb", and "Bad Reputation", all songs by Joan Jett.
    • "Edge of Midnight" is a mashup of Cyrus's song "Midnight Sky" and Stevie Nicks's song "Edge of Seventeen", featuring both artists.
  • Non-Appearing Title: "Take Me Along" doesn't feature the words Take Me Along.
  • The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: "7 Things" ends with Miley listing seven things that she likes about her ex instead of hates.
  • Pretty in Mink: She wore a fox coat in the "We Can't Stop" video, and the same coat for a few Christmas concerts that year.
  • Rearrange the Song:
    • Her live performances of "Do My Thang" on her ''Bangerz' tour have a square dance feel, at least in the beginning.
    • She celebrated the tenth anniversary of "See You Again" in 2017 by performing the song for the first time in six years on BBC Live Lounge, in a slower, folksy/country style.
  • Refuge in Audacity:
    • Went up to accept an award for Video of the Year at the 2013 MTV European Music Awards in Amsterdam, clearly lighting a joint on stage.
    • The 2013 MTV VMAs performance also ran on this to some extent.
    • This trope and Rule of Fun seem to feel a great deal of Miley's 2014 Bangerz tour, particularly during opening songs "(SMS) Bangerz", "4x4", and "Love Money Party".
      Michael K.: This is what happens when a 90s baby really, really wishes they lived through the 80s.
  • Retcon:
    • On her website circa August 2012, she has Breakout, Time of Our Lives and Can't Be Tamed, but no longer acknowledges her album "collaboration" with Hannah Montana called Meet Miley Cyrus.
    • As of late 2013, she doesn't even acknowledge that anything pre-Bangerz even existed.
    • Interviews taken around the release of Can't Be Tamed have Miley saying "seven years old me would beat-up 18-year old me for being a sellout", so maybe this is a trend we're seeing here.
    • Miley kept her teen-pop hits (and the occasional Hannah hit) in live setlists even up to the 2011 Gypsy Heart Tour, yet the only music of hers to predate 2012 in her regular Bangerz Tour setlists are "Can't Be Tamed" and "Party in the U.S.A.". May have something to do with her wanting to be seen as a new artist with her RCA Records deal. The tour's director, Dianne Martel, is responsible for barely any old hits being performed. She thought they "wouldn't fit" the theme of the tour. It's safe to say Miley may not have wanted to perform them either, though.
  • Rock is Authentic, Pop is Shallow: She has expressed this attitude at times, stating that she "hates Pop music" and that she doesn't like her own Pop music. This may have been Creator Backlash against her early music when she was starring on Hannah Montana and releasing kid-friendly pop music at the time. Despite this, much of the music Cyrus makes is firmly in the Pop category, though she has played with different genres such as Country, Rock, and Experimental.
  • Shoulders-Up Nudity: In the "Wrecking Ball" video, she is naked in the White Void Room portions of the video, but the camera only ever stays zoomed in at her face or only far away enough to show her bare shoulders.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The closeup of her face at the start of the "Wrecking Ball" video is one to Sinéad O'Connor's "Nothing Compares to U". Notably, O'Connor was not impressed.
    • Miley dresses up as one of her musical heroes, Elvis Presley, multiple times in the "Younger Now" video, and the cover of the album of the same name.
  • Singer Namedrop: "My best friend Lesley said, 'Oh, she's just bein' Miley.'"
  • Studio Chatter: Miley shouts "Rrrrock'N'Rolllll!!!" at the end of "East Northumberland High".
  • Supermodel Strut: "Wrecking Ball" has her doing slow-mo struts at the start of the video, all while dressed in her underwear and dragging a sledgehammer with her. Given it's a sad Break Up Song, it comes across as Lyrical Dissonance and just an attempt to invoke fanservice.
  • Surreal Music Video:
    • "Start All Over" breaks the bounds of logic.
    • "We Can't Stop" is even more surreal, with twerking, giant teddy bears, a fake finger amputation, diving in a swimming pool, etc.
    • "Lighter" is both this and a Minimalist Music Video.
  • Take That!:
    • "Robot" is basically one enormous Take That! aimed at the Disney machine and the Contractual Purity it entails, as well as a swipe at the Moral Guardians who overreact to Cyrus' every misstep. It could also be towards a certain episode of Family Guy that depicts her as an actual robot.
    • Her Saturday Night Live monologue got even straighter to the point, in which she compared her relatively mild scandals to the likes of Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan and satirically apologized, saying "I'm sorry that I'm not perfect." In the song, of course.
    • "Fly on the Wall" is about the paparazzi and how they like seeing things that aren't there with guys who are just her friends and how she's 100% committed to whoever she happens to be dating at any moment.
    • The line "It's my mouth, I can say what I want to" in "We Can't Stop" can be interpreted in this way.
    • This response to a meme snarkily and negatively comparing "old Miley" with "new Miley" note  and attributing it to her stoner habits was met with this caption on her Instagram account.
  • Teen Idol: Was only about thirteen when she hit it big.
  • Three Minutes of Writhing: Beginning with Party in the USA, hip gyrations have become an increasingly prominent part of Miley's dance repertoire, culminating in her twerking at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. It's since become a major part of her repertoire.
  • Title Track:
    • Breakout, The Time of Our Lives and Can't Be Tamed all have one.
    • "SMS (Bangerz)" is a partial example.
    • Endless Summer Vacation takes its title from a line in "Rose-Colored Lenses".
  • Toplessness from the Back: In the music video for "Wrecking Ball", when she's riding the eponymous wrecking ball in the nude, she's either seen with Scenery Censor provided by that chain from the front, or with a shot of her back back as she turns away from the camera.
  • The Tyson Zone: Starting with Bangerz, her behavior became so out of control that nothing she does comes across as surprising anymore.
  • Vocal Dissonance: Her cute appearance is a sharp contrast with her unusually deep, husky voice.
  • Vocal Evolution: Her cover of "Lilac Wine" erases all of her country and raspy vibes for a way fresher voice choice.
  • A Wild Rapper Appears!:
    • Bangerz is full of instances like these.
      • "4x4" features Nelly.
      • "My Darlin" features Future.
      • "Love Money Party" features Big Sean.
      • "FU" features French Montana.
      • "Hands in the Air" features Ludacris.
      • "23"note  features Wiz Khalifa and Juicy J.
    • Miley does her own rapping in "Liberty Walk" from her Can't Be Tamed album.
  • Winged Humanoid: She plays one (and also a Peacock Girl) in the music video for "Can't Be Tamed".
  • Word Salad Lyrics: Scattered throughout her Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz album.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Has a fondness for this:
    • Her 2013 album title Bangerz and her free 2015 album, Miley Cyrus And Her Dead Petz.
    • One of her YouTube accounts, which she opened after she had trouble posting videos on her own website, was (with some irony) called "MCForRealzzz".
    • When making The Miley And Mandy Show, she nicknamed herself and her dancer friend/co-host Mandy Jiroux "Milez" and "Manderz" in many episodes.

♫ There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Sometimes you're gonna have to lose
Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb... ♫

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