Chloe Govan - Miley Cyrus: Good Girl/Bad Girl

Copyright 2014 Omnibus Press
This edition 2014 Omnibus Press
(A Division of Music Sales Limited, 14-15 Berners Street, London W1T 3LJ)

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EISBN: 978-1-78323-187-4

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I T was August 2013 the night of the MTV VMAs and all hell was about to break loose in Brooklyn, New York. From demure Disney princess to defiantly debauched fallen angel, this was the moment when chameleonic Miley Cyrus would formally come of age.

Fittingly, she was just a few months short of her 21st birthday although in showbiz, the trademark of reaching legal majority was less about age and more about the moment of the first onstage twerk.

Duly, performing with fellow vocalist Robin Thicke for a medley of her number one hit Cant Stop and his chart-topping track Blurred Lines she would writhe provocatively, get up, close and personal with some life-size teddy bears, simulate masturbation with a giant foam finger and finally bend over in front of Robin and deliver what would soon become her trademark twerk.

The fact that her lewdness extended even to teddies traditionally childrens toys made the message abundantly clear: she was ceremonially shedding the skin of her squeaky clean Hannah Montana TV persona and becoming her own woman.

However the vocal partnership was far from music to Robins mother, Glorias, eyes. Apparently oblivious to the already abundant and ever-present sexual content in his songs and videos, she would place the blame for the scandal squarely on Miley, claiming damningly, I was not expecting her to put her butt that close to my son! The trouble is, shed shuddered in revulsion, as though Miley had been a predatory sex pest and Robin a traumatised and unwilling victim, now I can never unsee it!

Miley was unapologetic controversial or not, it was called showbiz for a reason, and true to form, this young multimillionaire was going to put on a show. As it turned out, Mrs Thicke Senior was the least of her worries when it came to condemning Miley, she was at the back of a very long queue.

During her performance, Twitter had almost crashed under a never-ending stream of outraged tweets at the record-breaking rate of over 300,000 per minute. Not only did the scandal far surpass Mother Monster Lady Gagas shenanigans which that night had included dressing as a priest but the tweet count had been almost a third greater than the time Justin Timberlake had accidentally ripped down Janet Jacksons top at the 2009 Superbowl to reveal a pre-watershed bare nipple. Plus it also almost topped that of the USAs recent presidential election night. Not only had the 2013 VMAs attracted more than triple their maximum tweet per minute rate from the previous year, but it seemed Miley was now a hotter topic than Barack Obama. Robin had surely been right when hed delivered a conspiracy-laced wink to his onstage ally and asserted, You know, tonight, were going to make history.

Yet the furore that ensued was part PR genius and part beautiful nightmare. The headlines the following morning screamed that misguided Miley was incapable of computing the difference between sexy and slutty, that she was on the verge of a mental breakdown and that the performance was a cry for help from a troubled young woman. Why else, the world asked accusingly, would anyone want to get onstage, gyrate and shock, horror enjoy herself?

Even one of Mileys backing dancers, Hollis Jane, reported that the experience that night had been the most degrading and dehumanising of her life. By her rather dramatic account, she had left the venue shaking and crying.

In that moment, a newcomer to Planet Earth might have been forgiven for assuming that New York was not the heartland of liberty that its iconic statue suggested, but in fact that theyd happened upon an oppressive Saudi Arabian outpost. (Damn the inadequate sat-nav on those spaceships!)

To modern mentalities, of course, the 16-year age gap between Robin and Miley was meagre, while the latter was actually doing no less than the average extroverted young woman might be seen indulging in at a nightclub. The only difference was that, as a multimillion-selling pop star with paparazzi lenses fixed firmly on her, her moments of hedonism were invariably played out in public.

Regardless, the accusations prevailed, along with the ceaseless question, What would the parents say?! Indeed, Mileys father, Billy Ray, was watching at the sidelines, consumed with sadness although not for the reasons the decency police might have thought.

In fact, this uncomfortable scenario was all too familiar for him hed experienced exactly the same criticism decades earlier himself when hed become an overnight sensation with his 1992 track Achy Breaky Heart. For him too, thered been an undeniable element of salacious sex appeal in his performances. Enthralled fans would scream hysterically and throw their bras at the stage as he shook his hips and derriere in time to the music. Rumours even ran rife that hed previously been a Chippendales erotic dancer. While his signature dance move wasnt quite a twerk, it was certainly sexually provocative, and soon became synonymous with his name.

Just as Mileys dance moves would inspire national twerking championships in her honour around the world, Billy Rays own wiggle had achieved the same heights. However the fact that the general public regarded him as a sex symbol hadnt made his journey much easier to navigate if anything it had blocked his road to progress. Hed struggled to be taken seriously when breaking into the music business in fact one record executive would admit that when he first attended her office, desperate for a window into the industry, shed thought hed have been better suited to modelling than music and all before shed heard a single note. My initial reaction to this gorgeous man, Kari Reeves would confess, was that he should have been a model for International Male instead of an aspiring country musician.

When he finally made it in music, the backlash soon began. To traditionalists, gyration and screaming groupies wasnt a scene with which they wanted country music to be associated they felt it gave the genre a bad name. Billy Rays detractors jeered that it was all about sex appeal over substance and that he was a talentless no-hoper shamelessly capitalising on his only asset his good looks. Without those handsome features, the masses had cruelly speculated, he wouldnt have stood a chance.

Whether it was jealousy or zealous over-judgment that drove the criticism, it was nonetheless deeply painful and now that history was repeating itself, with Miley being condemned as a slutty, shock value-orientated gimmick, familiarity didnt make their claims any less wounding.