In December of 2012, almost two years after the end of Hannah Montana and a little less than a year before she smashed back into the public eye naked on a wrecking ball, Miley Cyrus released her first Backyard Sessions videos on Youtube. These early Backyard sessions featured stripped down (though not necessarily acoustic) outdoor performances of cover songs from artists across genres, creating a sense of intimacy, rawness, and connection that gets transmuted as the Backyard Sessions continue into the 2020s. As the series evolved, Cyrus moved into featuring her own original projects including the launch of her Happy Hippie Foundation and later album releases. Over the course of her career, the Backyard Sessions series has become an integral part of Cyrus’s artistic formation and, I think, an important avenue to cement both her vocal talent and her connections to other musical artists, particularly in early iterations.

In addition to her the early Backyard Sessions covers, Cyrus has used live performance to build her musical network. During the Bangerz Tour, which I briefly touched on last time, every show featured an intimate and toned-down musical set in the middle of the concert where Cyrus would perform in close proximity to her band on a smaller stage. This set included an original song from the Bangerz album and a mixture of covers that changed every show. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these moments were much less talked about than other tour images and have not had the large-scale staying power of covers from Backyard Sessions in part because of the ephemeral nature of concert performance.

In this month’s blog, I’m exploring the early Backyard Sessions and the Bangerz cover sets to establish these as crucial moments where Cyrus constructs her artistic persona and credibility through musical network building and vocal talent.

The 2012 Backyard Sessions

Cyrus’s first set of Backyard Session videos were posted to Youtube from September to December 2012 featuring the songs “Lilac Wine,” “Look What They’ve Done to My Song,” and “Jolene.” In all three videos, Cyrus wears a messy bun, natural makeup, and neutral colors, sitting/standing in front of her band and crooning into a stand mic. The videos are shot in what appears to be a literal backyard, with bamboo framing the grass patch where the performance takes place and Cyrus occasionally perched by the pool with her guitar players. The series is described as “Miley [bringing] her band together to perform some of her favorite songs.” The visual aesthetic and description come together to create a sense of “naturalness” to both the performance and Cyrus as an artist, establishing this series as a casual jam session that fans are invited to and avoiding the appearance of performance commonly associated with young pop stars (Cyrus was 19 or 20 at the time of filming).

Cyrus’s “favorite songs” connect her to an earlier era of music ranging from 1950 to 1974 with a focus on folk and country. The first performance of the series, “Lilac Wine,” was most famously performed by Elkie Brooks in the 1970s but draws lines back to 1950s Broadway where the song originally appeared in the musical Dance Me a Song. Between the 1950s and Cyrus’s 2012 performance, “Lilac Wine” was covered by iconic artists like Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt, and Jeff Buckley, tying Cyrus’s performance to a history of jazz, soul, and blues. The second song, “Look What They’ve Done to My Song,” was originally sung by Melanie Safka in 1970. Melanie was one of only three solo women artists to take part in the 1969 Woodstock alongside Joan Baez and Janis Joplin, both of whom Cyrus has covered in the course of her career. In 2015, Cyrus re-recorded a backyard session of “Look What They’ve Done to My Song” (and other covers) alongside Melanie, not only tying her to the folk roots of the song, but legitimizing her in the genre. Finally, and most famously, Cyrus covered “Jolene,” by her godmother, Dolly Parton, a song that she’s continued to cover throughout her career both solo and alongside Parton.

These first three recorded cover songs in her Backyard Sessions establish Cyrus in a musical history of jazz, soul, folk, and country singers (both from original and cover artists). They may be her “favorite songs,” but they also position vast musical knowledge as her natural mode of listening and construct a matriarchal lineage of groundbreaking women artists, which she includes herself in. These choices serve to legitimize her as an artist, something that mainstream popular artists don’t always have access to. Cyrus’s move toward serious artistry is a thread she follows throughout her career by continuing to cover artists in a wide range of “serious” genres.

In addition to establishing a musical lineage, these covers allow her to showcase a different type of vocal talent. It is clear in these covers that Cyrus has a voice that lends itself well to the genres she’s chosen. A lower register that at times comes off with a raspy undertone create a stark distinction between the singles that bookended these recordings. This juxtaposition of popular music (what she’s made her musical career from) and the folk covers plays out clearly in the comment sections where the Backyard Sessions are understood as a clearer showcase of talent and natural ability. For instance, comments of her cover of “Jolene” range from “This where she shines. Pop has its place, but Miley is so much more classy in this genre” (@apodis4900) to “I love Miley’s music, but this is the kind of music she should be singing. Suits her voice much better” (@katrina7679). Comments have continued into the 2020s, over ten years after the video was originally posted with fans revisiting regularly and drawing attention to the cross-genre and cross-generational appeal of the covers.

These recordings come at a crucial moment in her career after her break with Disney and prior to establishing herself as a pop icon in a drastically different way.

The Bangerz Covers

A little over a year after releasing her Backyard Session recording of “Jolene,” and five months after the release of the Bangerz album, Miley Cyrus kicked off her Bangerz tour in Vancouver, British Columbia. Amidst the leotards, twerking, and flying hotdogs (just to name a few spectacular elements of the show), every concert contained a toned-down set of covers. Performed on a smaller stage, in close proximity to her band, and often dressed in an oversized shirt, the cover sets create a clear disruption in the spectacular images that the Bangerz tour was best known for. They also mark a clear musical break from the album as a whole which is largely influenced by hip-hop and pop while the cover sets offer a variety of genres from folk to classic rock, genres she began establishing herself in during the Backyard Sessions.

The set always starts with the song “Rooting for my Baby” from the Bangerz album before moving onto covers, traditionally with five songs before transitioning back into the regular set on the mainstage. This set changed regularly with Cyrus covering artists like Bob Dylan, Arctic Monkeys, The Beatles, The Flaming Lips, Dolly Parton, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths, Linda Ronstadt, Coldplay, Fleetwood Mac, Outkast, and Lana Del Rey. Much like the Backyard Sessions, Cyrus uses this set to breakdown the performance aspect of her persona, often appearing to choose specific songs for venue locations and creating a closeness with fans that the rest of the concert doesn’t allow for. Band member Stacy Jones confirmed in an interview that often songs were chosen the day of. If the Backyard Sessions connect Cyrus to a history of folk, country, and soul, The Bangerz covers broaden her musical ecosystem to include a variety of rock subgenres and pop while maintaining close connections to earlier genres (even “Hey Ya” becomes more of a country-influenced sound).

This set feels particularly important in the context of the larger show and the Bangerz album, in which Cyrus created a hip-hop influenced sound and persona, working with producers Pharrell Williams and Mike WiLL Made-It; featuring artists like Ludacris, French Montana, Big Sean, Nelly, and Future; and having all Black backup dancers and heavily co-opting/appropriating Black dance culture. Much like her covers, these partnerships sought to connect her to musical genres in an attempt to legitimize her presence to a much less successful degree. The central cover set, with her majority white band covering a majority white artists (Outkast and Irma Thomas being notable exceptions), stands in stark contrast to the persona that Cyrus embodied for the rest of the show.

This mid-point break feels like an attempt to remind the audience and critics that she is a serious musician beyond the persona that she created in her Bangerz tour which was often understood as overly-sexualized and unserious. However, it feels weighted that the moments of “true artistry” are positioned alongside the rest of the hip-hop and pop inspired performance, re-establishing clear divides between what music is taken seriously and what is not. Of course, this is not to say that hip-hop as a genre is unserious. Rather, the way in which Cyrus embodied and performed hip-hop, which was at least somewhat useful to dismantle (white) girlhood, placed the genre itself in comparison to the songs performed more seriously in her cover sets.

More than a Pop Star

Throughout her career, Cyrus has continued to record Backyard Sessions and perform covers on talk shows and television with a focus on folk and rock. In some instances, she performs alongside the original artists, like Dolly Parton, Brandi Carlile, Billy Idol, and Metallica.

As I’ve explored throughout these early performances, cover songs have offered Cyrus a way to build her musical range without necessarily interrupting her early pop persona. What covers do, particularly the Backyard Sessions, is move her outside of the assumed manufactured persona that is often associated with popular artists. They push back against, or offer an alternative narrative to, the artistic frames of reference that they sit within in her career trajectory (most notably a Disney starlet and a drug-fueled sex symbol). If people question Cyrus’s artistic ability because of her music and image during the transition into her Bangerz era, her covers offer a separate narrative that paint her as one of the vocal talents of her generation in line with decades of respected performers. Through her covers she becomes understood as a legitimized, serious artist. This, of course, is not the only way that Cyrus has establishes legitimacy throughout her career, but I do see it as one of the earliest attempts (but more on that in a later blog).

To watch Cyrus’s Backyard Sessions, visit this link, then let me know your favorite cover in the comments (I’ve been loving “Lilac Wine” most recently).

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In April of 2008, at the age of 15 and in the midst of Hannah Montana season 2, Miley Cyrus appeared bared back for the Vanity Fair article “Miley Knows Best” by Bruce Handy. The photograph, shot by renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz, caused an outrage with fans and parents, who lamented the “loss of innocence” and the “inappropriate” posing for a 15-year-old tween idol. In 2009, at the Teen Choice Awards, Cyrus danced with a pole on an ice cream truck while performing “Party in the U.S.A.,” again causing backlash around the appropriateness of the performance. Cyrus’s transition from, while still being very much in, the Disney universe is littered with a trail of these moments (these have been rehashed everywhere from Reddit to journal articles, so I won’t rehash them here).

Cyrus began creating a career separate from Hannah Montana starting in 2011, though she had begun separating herself musically in 2010 with music videos like “Who Owns My Heart” and “Can’t be Tamed.” In 2011, after the final season of Hannah Montana (titled Hannah Montana Forever), Cyrus was officially released from her contract with Disney/Hollywood records and transitions to focus on her musical career with RCA. In exiting Disney, Hannah and Miley stayed separate, often for legal reasons; Miley did not perform Hannah Montana songs or appear as Montana. The 20^th anniversary special, then, is the first time that we see the intentional merging of the two together since the final season and Miley’s final stage performance as Hannah in 2010.

It is impossible to discuss the live special without these moments of adolescent tension situated alongside it. Throughout the transition from Disney tween to pop star, Cyrus continually distanced herself from her Disney persona, partially for legal reasons and partially as a teenager figuring out her identity from a global stage. What, then, do we make of the 20^th anniversary when Miley Cyrus reclaims the blonde wig and performs Hannah Montana’s songs for the first time since the early 2010s? For me, this moment marks a new way for Cyrus to explore her adolescent transition from Disney star to adult artist, through a nostalgic reclaiming of Montana. This is clearest in the musical performances of the anniversary special.

The 20^th Anniversary Performances

The Hannah Montana 20^th Anniversary Special consists of three separate musical sets interspersed between interviews, Hannah Montana clips and photos, and Cyrus revisiting the Hannah Montana set. Together, the three musical sets rewrite the transition from Hannah Montana to Miley Cyrus, skipping the messiness of Cyrus’s early career move from Disney while reclaiming her agency and identity as Hannah Montana. Rather than an interrupted timeline between Hannah Montana, early Miley Cyrus, and later Cyrus, the special allows Cyrus to create a cohesive identity between the three while using their original separation as a lyrical point of reflection.

The special opens with the Hannah Montana logo as the stage backdrop: “Hannah Montana” written in orange and purple letters filled in with lightbulbs, situated within a rectangle lightbulb frame. If you’ve watched the show, you’ll realize that the first song of the set is likely to be “Best of Both Worlds,” the show’s theme song and arguable thesis statement of the Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus trio. Cyrus delivers immediately, rising from under the stage in a signature waste-length blonde wig with bangs, a fuzzy black vest, and pants wrapped in a shimmering gold scarf belt. The camera pans over the audience, fans wear matching wigs (some wear colorful wigs that resemble Hannah Montana’s best friend Lola) and sparkly clothing; they sing along with Montana/Cyrus. The first performance is indicative of Hannah Montana’s signature performance style with backup dancers and choreography, a lighting setup, and mini-fireworks. It grounds the live and televised audience in a sense of nostalgia while also reintroducing Hannah Montana.

The mid-point performance consists of two Hannah-Montana era songs, “This is the Life” and “The Climb.” However, we lose the Hannah Montana backdrop and the backup dancers and trade them in for a Cyrus alone on the stage in a dark shimmering floor-length halter gown and sunglasses. She performs this set mostly standing in place, holding a corded microphone, and limited in movement by dress she’s wearing – bearing resemblance to how these songs have been performed in the past. While “This is the Life” was not performed by Cyrus outside of her early career as Montana, “The Climb” is a Hannah Montana-era song that Cyrus has performed consistently throughout her adult career including for the Endless Summer Vacation Backyard Sessions (2023), The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (2017), and the Howard Stern Show (2017). This particular song has become a stand-in for understanding Cyrus’s tumultuous celebrity experience as well as an anthem for fans when they’re struggling, cementing an autobiographical connection between fans and Cyrus.

If the first performance re-introduced us to Hannah Montana, this mid-point performance toes the boundaries between Montana and Cyrus, actively conjuring the transition between the two and speaking to the dual nature of her fame. “This is the Life” maintains the positive affect of Hannah Montana that is on show through the first set, while “The Climb” transitions into the more complicated reality that both Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus had to confront as their fame developed.

At the end of the set, Cyrus acknowledges this separation that has existed between Hannah and Miley. She encourages the audience to look back and look out – they (the fans and the artist) have all grown together. She goes on: “I used to think of Hannah as something separate from myself…[this anniversary] is my reclaiming of merging Hannah and Miley together…I like some of what Hannah’s got going and I like a lot of Miley, so I want to put them together.” This moment acknowledges the historical disconnect between Hannah and Miley, both the disconnect that Cyrus created as well as the disconnect that was enforced through licensing and contract. It also brings her fans into the conversations, something that Cyrus has always intentionally done, positioning herself as a friend rather than a queen or mother (as she argues other celebrities like Beyonce and Dolly Parton have done). In this way, she is not only recapturing and repairing her own connection to the past, but she’s collectively repairing others. The experience of growing and evolving is shared, creating a common thread between Miley Cyrus and her fans both within the frame of reference and as individuals.

The final performance which closes the anniversary special is a new song that Cyrus wrote for the event, “Younger You.” This performance stands in stark contrast to the other three performances; it isn’t in front of the live audience but instead on a private sound stage with Cyrus and her band, creating a sense of personal intimacy and confessional that hasn’t existed throughout the special. This is further underscored by the vocal-forward arrangement and the pared down performance aspects of this staging where Cyrus performs sitting in a black jumpsuit while images of Hannah Montana and a younger Cyrus play behind her and the band. The song adopts the point-of view of a “younger you” (here understood as both a younger Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana), as Cyrus laments, “somewhere along the way we lost touch.” Eventually, the background images of Hannah Montana are replaced by a modern-day Cyrus in her Hannah Montana wig. On the sound stage, the camera zooms out as Cyrus looks toward the floor and the video background fades out.

I understand this last performance as a shift from a focus on fans to a focus on Cyrus’s personal reflection and nostalgia. If the entirety of the special was a celebration of Hannah Montana and a looking back alongside fans, this performance lands us at Cyrus in the present as she gives softness to her own experience of separation and loss.

But What About…

Until the 20^th anniversary, Cyrus hasn’t been able to comfortably situate her childhood stardom alongside her adult popstar persona in any public way. In her movement from Hannah Montana to Miley Cyrus (from roughly 2008 at age 15 through 2014 Bangerz tour era), Cyrus lived a highly public transition from childhood star (importantly a childhood Disney star) to pop entertainer. Photographs by Annie Liebovitz, Terry Richardson, and Karl Lagerfeld produced overlapping and ambivalent meanings of adolescence and the demarcations of age, while the Bangerz tour pushed grotesque femininity (e.g. Cyrus as an overexaggerated animation with wagging tongue, overgrown toenails, huge butt, and flopping breasts drawn by Ren and Stimpy animator John Kricfalusi) and commodification to new boundaries for a Disney starlet.

The 20^th anniversary special acts as a repair for Miley Cyrus, bringing pieces of her career together in a cohesive timeline. Cyrus has consistently used images, vocals, lyrics, and style to show artistic growth, but here she relies on a cohesive visual that ties together the past and present supported by lyrical storytelling. In some ways, this version of storytelling erases the messy in-between, the imperfect visual of girlhood and womanhood that Cyrus toyed with in her Bangerz era, and the potential missteps of growing up under public scrutiny. Instead of complicating gender, sexuality, age, and commodification, the 20^th anniversary special integrates Cyrus into an easily-digestible pop persona, for both Disney and the wider public, and trades in experimental work (that definitely had its problems) for legible artistic growth and a unified artistic timeline. In this reformulation, any transgressive potential is erased; we no longer have the space to explore what growing up might look like, who has the ability to make mistakes and recover, or the complications of commodified sexuality.

I’m left wondering, what would it look like for Cyrus to integrate all of these versions of herself and what could this teach us about girlhood more broadly. What potential might be opened if Hannah Montana and all of the Miley Cyrus’s exist alongside each other as a form of repair instead of just these two?

Join me as I explore these moments in this blog – from Hannah Montana to Miley Cyrus and back again. And let me know if there’s a Miley moment you can’t stop thinking about…