Dan WeissMiley Cyrus' Hannah Montana is one of the easier Disney shows for adults to sit through. Her voice and wide eyes aren't totally unlike a young Lucille Ball. Still, that might not be enough to make an adult investigate her music.
But her surprisingly not-overplayed catalogue contains some of the best and most surprising pop of the last decade. It's unpretentious, well-sung and startlingly tasteful. She's not self-righteous, and she's usually not trying to seduce the listener like so many other nymphets. Oh, and her political views are startlingly cogent; she hated Rick Santorum before he almost won Iowa (see below). We love thee, Miley Cyrus; let us count the ways.
She smokes weed and supports Occupy Wall Street.
At only 16, this walking franchise recorded “Wake Up America,” a freaking global warming song: “I know that you don't want to hear it/ Especially coming from someone so young.” Needless to say, it's a lot smarter than the gum-snapping Britney Spears who supported George W. Bush in Fahrenheit 9/11.
Cyrus' biggest public snafus are for smoking a shit ton of weed (for her 19th birthday, she got a Bob Marley cake) and supporting OWS. Please let me know when these become actual bad things.
She loves Radiohead.
Radiohead turned down her request to meet them backstage at the 2009 Grammys. They were her favorite band! Hipsters roared with laughter, but what it came down to, when you really think about it, was five total dickbags who refused to shake the hand of a young fan. The grown men later dissed her as “entitled.” They should have been honored, considering she's probably the first teenage girl to ever want to meet them.
She's the likeable Avril Lavigne.
Barring a few whatever ballads, 2008's Breakout is as good an album as Britney or Avril has released, with the additional bonus of having a personality that's not antisocial. Whenever she lashes out, it's quite reasonable: “Fly on the Wall” rightfully taunts “creepy little, sneaky little” tabloid photogs/perverts who tail a minor. Otherwise, she's not complaining about fame, and actually seems pretty grateful for it.
The masterpiece “7 Things” dishes on actually relatable boy troubles (“Your friends are jerks/when you act like them/just know it hurts”) and turns the tables on its I-hate-you venting with a final refrain about why she loves him anyway. (You're made of ice if you don't awww at the video's crying teddybear girl.) And she sings the best version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” you've ever heard.
She got an actual good song out of Jessie J.
In case you were wondering why Jessie J exists, she wrote Miley's biggest hit “Party in the U.S.A.,” thereby justifying her existence. And I'll bet Miley would've turned down “Price Tag” for being too banal.
She is a bird.
As far as teen idols' awkward attempts to sex it up go, you could do a lot worse (and Christina Aguilera has) than the unquestionably awesome opening moments of the “Can't Be Tamed” video. The only thing that could make it better is if the robot voice intoned “Bird Mafia!” instead of “Rock Mafia!” in the song's intro.
She makes Billy Ray cry.
The man who hexed the world with “Achy Breaky Heart” feels like a failure because his wildly successful and charming daughter had her 18th birthday in a bar . (“It was wrong. It was for 21-year-olds and up.”) He also equates her success to Kurt Cobain and Lindsay Lohan (“I'd erase it all in a second if I could”). Uh, isn't she dealing with it a little better than those two worst case scenarios? Moron.
She hates Rick Santorum.
Game over. She wins.
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