Miley Cyrus on Getting Engaged, Her Phobia of Paper & Writing a Song for Avatar: Fire and Ash

Multi-platinum-selling, multi-Grammy-winning, multi-faceted Miley with a new song called Dream as One. It is featured in the new movie Avatar, Fire and Ash. Please welcome Miley Cyrus. Everyone is here. Look at you. You're all so lovely. Thank you for having me tonight. You look great. You smell like leather. That's nice. Thank you very much. Yeah, it's perforated leather. Perforated leather. I smell like perforated leather. The best kind of leather. Yeah. And congratulations on your engagement. Thank you very much. I see your ring there. Your fiancé, I wonder if he realizes, Max, she's your fiancé. Yeah. That if he'd waited like three weeks, he wouldn't have to come up with a Christmas gift. This was Black Friday deal, baby. Oh, I see. It wasn't, but he was smart that way. It might have been. I'm not sure. It better not have been. What does one get a Miley Cyrus as if there are more than one of you for Christmas? That seems like an impossible task. Well, Christmas, I'm known as a little bit of a Grinch because I have a qualm with Christmas. What is it? I hate paper. Looking at that makes me want to vomit. Don't even do it. Should I move it away? That's worse. Moving it is worse? And then the real problem for me with paper is when people have dry hands and they touch paper and then it's Christmas and it's cold and everyone's hands are dry and they're all touching paper. Oh, I was going to moisturize. Oh my God, don't even start. I see stationery. I was just going to moisturize, but I don't have any. No, like when someone sends me like a lovely letter, I just don't even open it. Really? No. Wow. I just don't even worry. That's interesting. I love text message, no paper. Email, no paper. Phone call, no paper. It's the, I can't even talk about it. Can you read the newspaper? That, no. Oh, wow. It really, just hearing about it. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a phobia and I need help. What about rolling papers? I think you're probably okay with those, right? My hands aren't dry. Okay. And neither are the papers because I know, you know, you have to lick the paper. Yeah. That was a very professional. Yeah, it was. It was a good lick. I've done that before. Big paper also. Your imaginary joints are huge. Yeah. Wow. That's, wow. What a thing to deal with. Like I've eyed those cards. I've been on your show multiple times and I've thought. That upsets you. I love that you're all about the improv because if you had to pick that up, I would die. Oh, wow. I'm seeing it. That's, has it been your whole life? Have you suffered with this? It's getting worse and so there does need to be some sort of intervention and I am going to look into some sort of maybe EMDR, being hypnotized about it because it is affecting my everyday life. It is. It is affecting my, well. You can't get away from it. Okay. Like someone gets an Amazon box. I'm sick because the cardboard is the worst of it all. Oh, really? Yeah. It's extra dry and there's packaging within it. So I go outside. That's the best part. That's really why I got engaged is because I just make my fiance open all the packages outside. Yeah. I think like the first year anniversary is paper or something. Uh-uh. Not here. Yeah. No, you're not going to go traditional with that. Absolutely not. Will you even sign the marriage certificate or will somebody have to do that for you? Okay. Here's my one. This is the thing is wax paper. Like anything that's got like a smooth surface, that's better. And from the last marriage, I think I remember that the paper is waxed. It's not waxed. But I had smoked one of those imaginary joints. So I can't really remember. You think you signed wax paper? I'm pretty sure. I think you may have been making cookies is what happened. Okay. So what about that when they wrap gifts with that kind of rubbery stuff that's like paper, but it's kind of- That's much better. Like the reusable one that's got like, I'm fine with that. And I love stockings and anything that I want is usually pretty small and it can fit perfectly fine within a silk stocking. No paper. Oh, okay. I prefer silk. No dryness. This since you were, how old did you have this? My brothers used to traumatize me and yeah, I'm looking at them because they used to, okay. So my mom at one point wanted to be a flight attendant, but then she got another phobia kind of like this. She hates to fly. That's a more typical phobia. So then she made us drive everywhere and my dad worked in Canada. So every weekend from Nashville, Tennessee, we would drive to Toronto, Canada, like 14 hours. And there's five kids all in the car and a German shepherd. So my brother's like, you know, my mom would be driving and it would be complete chaos because all of us would fight for the entire 14 hours. And then to really torture me, they would rub paper together while I was in the back seat. Oh, what happened if you get lost and you have to unfold that? There was a map. There was a time like my mother was driving across country with these children with a map. I always think about that when I can just go anywhere on my phone now. Yes. That's how it was. We had an actual map from Tennessee to Canada. Yeah. I know I'm old. I know. Yeah. I mean, I had those maps, you know? Yeah. And there was a book called The Thomas Guide, which was our books. Can you read books? Okay. So books again, I was so happy when they had a Kindle, when the Kindle was invented, because that solved a lot of problems for me. Wow. The iPad solved a lot of problems for me. But again, as long as they're not dry, which when I write my book, wax paper and you can take one page out and I won't be offended. Rolling paper. Can I make a suggestion? I would suggest that it is possible that technology is actually making this phobia worse because you are now creating a world in which you have less exposure to this product that you don't care for. I agree with that. And now it's becoming even scarier to you. Like that book is like giving me hell right now. Yeah. The book. Cameron. Yeah. It's like in Jaws where you just barely ever see the shark. That's it. You know, that's you with the paper. Yeah. You got to do something about that. I know. I'm working on it. Yeah. Okay, good. All right. Good. I'm glad you're working on it. All right. You know what? We've started now. What? We've just started. Yeah, we just started. Well, you know what? Let's take a break now and I will keep. What a fulfilling segment we've done. Listen. James Cameron is going to be so happy. I got to tell you something. We just learned a lot about you. We need to go to Pandora and skip the paper. We're going to go to Pandora when we come back. Miley Cyrus is here. We'll be right back. We're back with Miley Cyrus, which rhymes with Papyrus. You've written a song for this huge motion picture. We know it's going to be huge. We know before it even comes out. This Avatar, Fire and Ash. You've written a song called Dream as One. Dream as One. And I'm curious about that process because when you write, you have a director like Jim Cameron, who's obviously very hands-on. Does he call you and say, would you write a song? So like the qualm with Christmas, I have one with James Cameron because he's been working on this movie for 20 years. Right. And he just remembered two months before it came out that there was no song for the credits. Really? Just a last minute, like, oopsie. Like a 20 year in the making, oopsie. And so I, to rub it in, if you remember, I'm a Disney legend. Yeah, you are. So, and this is going to make you even more sick because last year, I believe I came here and I was, had just done the song with Jamie Lee Curtis for Pamela Anderson's movie, which I met her at the Disney Legends event because I said, if you ever need anything, let me know. And then I got a Golden Globe nomination. And then this time, James Cameron was there. And I said, well, you know, let me know what you're working on. I knew what he was working on, but I was just trying to kind of wiggle myself into the Avatar universe. Right. And so I said, if you ever need a song, let me know. And then he needed a song and he calls us legends in law. One day, you'll join. I don't know. I don't think I will. I think I'm permanent. I will never be a Disney legend. I figured it out. No one has cost this company more money in the history. Yeah, you might have botched it. Yeah, yeah. You were on your way. But you know what? You might be right because speaking of the rolling papers, I smoked a joint when I had a Walmart deal and I thought they would come crawling back and they never did. I never worked with them again. They don't like that. But Disney did pretty good. You're back. So you get this call. We're happy he's back. I've got two months. I need this song. Yeah. Does he say, does he tell you what kind of song he wants? Well, Dream is One is a very kind of massive and very global title and Avatar is loved all around the world. And when I think of we, I think of all of us. I think of, you know, that's me kind of talking to the world and creating us, you know, to all unify. And he also wanted the song to feel intimate and personal and emotional, which a title like We Dream is One to me felt so massive that it was really kind of a challenge to songwrite in something that I could make feel small because the instinct is to kind of go toe to toe with Avatar. But what I chose to do, which is I like to contradict everything and do the opposite of what you're supposed to do, was actually surrender to the scale of the film and make it something small. Because at the heart of James Cameron movies, it's really about relationships. And they're actually very intimate stories. With all those ideas on your own, he didn't tell you he wants you to do that. Well, I would go to call Jim and we would, I would kind of just have some questions. And then we would talk what I thought should have been a two minute call for two hours about life and death and his experiences and what the kind of inspiration is behind this kind of fantastic universe that he's made. And once I got to know his, not just his mind, which is genius, but really his heart, it made it so much easier for me to write because he thinks a lot and feels a lot of the same ways that I do. And so I loved writing a song that has so much emotion because that's what Avatar is built on. It's built on heart. And then when you are finished with the song, do you go and play it for him? Do you send it to him? And are you nervous at that point? You know what? I wasn't nervous because I felt confident in what I had created. And I felt that with Avatar Fire and Ash, I've had my own experience with fire, losing my home, rebuilding again, starting over. I felt like I could, you know, really kind of use this song as a journal entry, but also be inspired by the movie, which I had seen and was very cool because I got the film actually projected into the studio. So I was recording in Pandora. I had all of the world actually immersed. So I could really see all the colors and the creatures and be inspired by that. Are you sure it was projected or maybe you were rolling? Yeah. Or I ripped a page out of my memoir. Have you ever thought about recording a Christmas album? So funny you should ask. I've never done an album. I did write a song one time and it was very niche. It was called A Sad Christmas Song. It was about being very sad on Christmas, which I think people lean more into the merry, joyful, bright and gay. You think so? Well, the fact you've asked me if I have a Christmas song, I know like it's niche. Like no one knows I have a Christmas song. Okay. And yeah, it didn't go, it didn't, it wasn't that hot. I think I got to do another round. You recorded it and you're like, I'm not gonna, no, I'm not gonna release it. Well, I put it out and the fact that no one here was like, yay, we love that song. That shows it was very niche. I think it has like 909 listens on YouTube. Well, maybe we'll have a, you know, resurgence. As a result of this, but you know, you never know. You want to do a more upbeat Christmas? I think that's more what people are looking for at the holiday time. Okay. All right. What would Jim Cameron want from you? Christmas song? Would he? Well, we'll know in 20 years when we finish making it, because I'm sure he'll go down to the bottom of the ocean, find some inspiration and come back with hopefully some nice waxed Christmas paper. One more question. What is the greatest original song ever written for a film? This one. For a film. Okay, yours is solid. Okay, but this one doesn't count because the one I'm going to pick, I don't believe, well, I know it's not written for a film, but it's so iconic in a film, which is I Will Always Love You. Oh, yeah. Which is Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton. She wrote that song. And I thought of that song so much as I was writing this, because I love when a film and a song can be embedded in that way. You can't have one without the other. Right. That's a great answer. The correct answer is Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News. But yours was good, really good. Top three for sure. Definitely. Great to see you. Thank you, Jimmy. And listen to the song. It's called Dream as One. You can download it. You can buy it. You can listen to it. And Avatar Fire and Ash comes out in the theaters on December 19th. Miley Cyrus, everybody. We'll be back.