Miley Cyrus had a few things to get off her chest when performing at the iconic Hollywood Bowl on Sunday night.
The Grammy winner recently unveiled her 10th album Bass Persuades, and to mark the occasion, announced two stand-alone shows at the legendary California venue on Friday and Sunday.
During the second of these engagements on Sunday night, Miley took a moment to address some of the criticism that had been levelled against her on social media in the wake of Friday’s show, which marked her first live concert performance in four years.
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She told the fans in attendance on Sunday: “I’ve never heard that I don’t put my heart into something. I don’t know if any of you heard [that] somebody was doing commentary to get clickbait on their video talking about my show on Friday night.”
“I’m a lot of things and we’re not even going to entertain that,” she continued.
Miley later admitted: “It is hard for me to stand up here and do this show. It does not come as natural as it once did to me before.
“Because, like all of us, we change, we evolve, we grow, and we find what gets to come with us. What continues to fit.
“And you all are more to me than an ‘experiment’. That is absolutely not what this is. This is not an experiment of you, this is an experience for me.”
“I can take a lot, but one thing I will not stand is any question about where my heart is when I’m on the stage. I am fully present,” she then added.
Later in the concert, she also referenced some of the criticisms levelled against her, during a rendition of her album’s title track.
Over the years, Miley has made no secret of the fact that she has complicated feelings towards touring and performing live.
In the 12 years since her 2014 Bangerz tour – which generated no end of headlines at the time – she has only toured twice. The first of these was an eight-date North American jaunt in support of her Miley Cyrus And Her Dead Petz project, and the other was a 10-night tour of North and South America in 2021 and 2022, to promote her album Plastic Hearts.
In 2023, Miley claimed that touring is something she doesn’t find to be “healthy” for her, stating: “What people don’t really understand about touring [is that] the show is only 90 minutes, but that’s your life. If you’re performing at a certain level of intensity and excellence, there should be an equal amount of recovery and rest.
“There’s a level of ego that gets overused when I’m on tour and once that switches on, it’s hard to turn it off. And I think when you’re training your ego every single night to be active, that’s the hardest switch for me to turn off.”
Miley added: “[The lifestyle of touring] erases my humanity and my connection. And without my humanity and my connection, I can’t be a songwriter, which is my priority.”
Last year, the Flowers singer told Good Morning America: “I do have the physical ability, and I have the opportunity to tour. I wish I had the desire, but I don’t.
“I also don’t think that there’s an infrastructure that supports artists.”
She continued: “It’s really hard to maintain sobriety when you’re on the road, which is kind of a pillar of stability in my life. None of this that I create would even be possible without the way I think about things.”
