How Miley Cyrus Became the Most Reliable Act in Showbiz

There was something new about the Miley Cyrus who graced the stage at Studio 8H back in 2015 for SNL40. She took the stage in a white pantsuit bedazzled with roses and sang a cover of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” The performance was loose, confident, and relaxed. Though countless have covered Simon’s song throughout the years, Cyrus brought a refreshing energy to the karaoke classic — leaning hard on notes and smirking as she sang. It was the first glimpse at a Cyrus who would be defined by a mature sensibility, no longer the enfant terrible but a pop star going back to the roots of what made her love music in the first place.

Ten years later, Cyrus was a main attraction at both over-the-top SNL50 events. First, she performed her megaviral hit “Flowers” at Radio City Music Hall while calling out celebrities by their first names. She popped up once again at Studio 8H to sing yet another cover for SNL’s anniversary special: Alongside Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard, she sang Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” most famously covered by Sinéad O’Connor. There was little rhyme or reason to Cyrus’s presence at the special beyond her history with the show — but plenty of other singers (like Beyoncé, with whom she won a Grammy the previous weekend) have appeared on the show just as often, if not more. Yet next weekend, she’ll present at the Oscars. For what reason, exactly? Her original song for The Last Showgirl missed getting a nomination, so the presenting gig could just be a hat tip, but mostly it seems like Cyrus will show up because people like having her around.

Like Lady Gaga before her and Sabrina Carpenter after, Cyrus has settled into a pop-star niche in which she can pop up wherever, do what she needs to do, and move on with her life. Perhaps this is indicative of being in her 30s: mature, relatively speaking, in pop-star years, or at least mature enough to know how and when to be present and how and when it’s all too much. “I realize now the show can go on, but ‘the show must go on’? That I can’t live by anymore,” Cyrus told Dave Letterman in their episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction in June of 2024. That laid-back approach has come to define the singer’s career over the past few years: She puts out albums when she wants to, she appears in public when she wants to, she’s only as present as she feels she has to be.

That Cyrus can theoretically “do” anything felt like part and parcel of being a former child star (like Carpenter); the Disney apparatus demands a figure who can act, sing, dance, and tell jokes. Cyrus’s early solo-music career was marked by chaos in both persona and output (remember Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz?); her style oscillated with an ostentatious lack of taste, and her music varied wildly between genres. Being a chameleon as a musician is one thing — Cyrus always had a great voice — but her ongoing identity crisis and need to act out came to define what was otherwise a productive and interesting time. While a divorce, like the one the singer went through with Liam Hemsworth in 2019, can be a destabilizing life change, Cyrus emerged from personal tumult a little more zen. She didn’t indulge the heartbreak so much as she pushed through. “No one stays the same,” she belted in “Younger Now,” and she put that to good use in last year’s Endless Summer Vacation. As Cyrus continues, she’s pulled away from the pop machine into something a little more refined and casual — someone who will stop by the party for an hour, but won’t stay till the very end. She’ll do covers, she’ll play the hits; so long as she wants to be there, she’ll prove herself reliable.

On the same episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Cyrus told a story about putting on a show at the Chateau Marmont before her birthday as an act of reclaiming her love of performance and music. “Music can be for thousands or millions of people, like if you’re performing at the Grammys, but it can just be for your intimate friends and family,” Cyrus explained. That joy is apparent whenever Cyrus shows up anywhere now, no sign of wear and tear or needless obligation or self-promotion. Her music reached a pleasant apex — affirming, powerful, and interesting — the type that allows her to keep her old fans but also win over parents when they hear it on the radio. Like many once-wayward teenagers, she’s developed into a professional to depend on, no matter where or when you need her. At SNL50, she stood onstage, cloaked in purple fur, commanding the lights and drums with a steely confidence and packing a greater punch than she had ten years prior. SNL hired her to bring the house down, and like any good standby, she delivered.

Related

• Miley Cyrus Says She Has ‘No Desire’ to Tour Again
• Miley’s Californication Is Complete
• David Letterman Is the Only Straight Man Allowed at Miley Cyrus’s Private Shows