Miley Cyrus has delivered an on-stage riposte to those who claimed that she appeared to be disinterested in some of her older material during the first of her two Hollywood Bowl shows at the weekend.
The gigs were scheduled in support of Cyrus’s new album, Bass Persuades, which was released last month. The setlist for the shows leant heavily on that record’s tracklisting, but Cyrus did also perform some of her older hits – the likes of Wrecking Ball, Party in the USA, We Can’t Stop and The Climb.
When footage from Friday’s gig surfaced online, though, Cyrus was accused by some of appearing to be less than fully engaged during these songs, leaving the audience to sing some of the lyrics.
Cyrus didn’t take this lying down, though: in fact, she addressed it head on during her second show on Sunday, delivering an impassioned defence.
Hitting back at the suggestion that she hadn’t “put her heart” into parts of the first show, Cyrus said that she wasn’t “even going to entertain that”. She did, however, say that it’s becoming more difficult for her to get up on stage: “It is hard for me to stand up here and do the 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.”
Cyrus has been open about the challenges she faces when performing live. In a 2025 interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, she explained: “I have this very large polyp on my vocal cord, which has given me a lot of the tone and the texture that has made me who I am, but it's extremely difficult to perform with because it's like running a marathon with ankle weights on.”
She added some more context to her decision not to tour at the moment when she spoke to Variety earlier this year. “I actually miss and love live shows,” she said, “but me being on the road for six months out of the year and leaving my family and my normalcy and my routine is just not best for me.”
In her speech at the Hollywood Bowl, though, Cyrus was keen to stress that she still values her audience just as much as she always did. “You 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. And you all make the experience possible.”
Suggesting that she’d been stung by some of the criticism, Cyrus admitted that part of her didn’t want to perform the second show. “I had already told myself that I wasn’t going to come on stage, that I was going to run away,” she told the crowd, “but never would I leave you all sitting in these seats. 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.”
Cyrus also referenced the furore during recent single Bass Persuades: “Oh, I forgot I’m supposed to sing every fucking line!” she joked.
Fans singing along at gigs has become surprisingly controversial over the past few years, particularly in the pop world. While some wear it is a badge of honour that know every word and like to prove it by singing every line at the top of their voices – sometimes even criticising those who choose not to – others are of the opinion that it’s the artist they’ve come to hear, not the person sitting or standing next to them.
It wasn’t always this way, though: in a 2023 interview with Total Guitar, Brian May of Queen – an audience participation band if ever there was one – admitted that he used to get annoyed when people sang along at their early gigs.
Remembering those days, he explained: “We were a group which was doing quite well, we had a good following, and we had this thing where people insisted on singing along to our songs. And I think we were quite irritated by it! Because we thought, ‘People, just listen. We’re working really hard, so bloody well listen!’”
Instead of continuing to get annoyed, though, May decided to embrace the fans’ behaviour. “I said to Freddie, ‘Maybe, instead of fighting this, we should be encouraging it. Maybe we should be harnessing this kind of energy which seems to be happening.’ And we all agreed that this was something really interesting that we should experiment with – letting the audience be a bigger part of the show.”
This led directly to May writing We Will Rock You, possibly the most audience-friendly song of them all.
