Many of us know Miley Cyrus as the former teen star Hannah Montana; whose southern charm and chart topping hits made her a household name. Recently Miley has become a bit more edgy. It seems as though her hobbies consist of twerking, sticking her tongue out, and sexually harassing the viewers of this year’s VMAs. Despite all of her crazy antics, Miley Cyrus is making money and her fans still love her. Miley has a net worth of over $100 million dollars and over 13 million twitter followers. We can judge her all we want; but if her goal is to stay relevant and to make money, she is doing it right.
However, I do have to acknowledge the fact that her gimmicks are quite unoriginal and lack substance. I find it interesting that she is so fascinated by twerking as if twerking is some new craze. Twerking has been around for years. If you jog your memory back to your high school prom, twerking was there, but back then it was called ‘grinding’. Her love for twerking doesn’t bother me as much as her not so graceful infiltration of the hip hop community and “urban lifestyle”.
It seems like this “dime piece”, “bad b*tch”, and ratchet version of Miley is coming out of left field. Though it is her choice on how she wants to dress, act, and speak, I feel that she is trying to mimic something that perhaps she doesn’t understand. Our society has come to understand artists such as Meek Mill or 2 Chainz who are bound to be a bit rough around the edges, especially since many hip hop artists as well as rock artists are known for pushing boundaries. Miley being known as a pop artist or country artist makes it harder for us to understand this new persona. Perhaps if she gradually transitioned, people wouldn’t be so disturbed by it all, and we could actually believe that this new Miley is authentic. Instead, I believe she is doing all these antics in order to show some sort of “creative freedom” or dare I say “woman empowerment”.
I can appreciate a well thought out and creative new sound or persona of an artist, but Miley is going about it in all the wrong ways. Her new music is definitely different and as much as I don’t want to admit, it is pretty good. Unfortunately, after her overly sexualized, nonsensical, and sloppy VMA performance it is hard to respect her. Perhaps Miley doesn’t want to be respected and she is more concerned about being fun. But for long term success in the music industry she should be careful about how she brands herself. One day, fun and crazy Miley could become old news. I would hope her upcoming album proves that she can be fun and successful. I guess we just have to wait until October 8th when her new album Bangerz drops.