Miley's Concert Crash Out | Get To The Hook

Welcome to Get to the Hook. I am your co-host, Charles Latibodiere. And I am your co-host, Eric Colley. And the hook this week, Miley Cyrus and a quote from the great, I believe it is Mick Jagger, comes to mind. What a drag it is, getting old. Er. Old er, in this case. And not just Miley we're singling out here. There are a few acts we're going to talk about that are in a strange stage. yeah it's weird all the the big pop stars of the 2000s who are teenagers then a lot of them are in their early 20s are struggling with their live shows now yeah either the performance or the desire to do it some of them just don't perform at all anymore some are becoming legacy acts and aren't adjusting well to it yeah and i think part of the problem is they are part of the challenge for them and adjusting is that fans are letting them know about it because of social media now it becomes a thing and it became a thing during miley's recent shows here in uh in la at the hollywood bowl her first shows in four years so she'd been not performing for a while came back october 16th like you said to the hollywood bowl and people were i mean obviously the fans there at the bowl if you're a hardcore miley fan you're gonna love whatever she does just seeing her on stage is exciting i will say people were very excited about those shows that there were people in our office we're walking around and talking about very excited to go um so i kind of thought it was going to be a you know easy home run just knock it out of the park for her yeah right i think it depends also what kind of fan you are if you like i said if you're a hardcore fan you're really into it because you're going to hear the new songs she has a new album out called Plastic Hearts Plastic Hearts if you haven't heard it yet this is the title song let's go now the album did debut at number one recently but then sounds great the second week it dropped from number one to number 157 which means the miley fans i think the smilers isn't that what they were called yeah her fan base they showed up that first week they all bought their vinyl and then there was nobody around the second week so people aren't as interested in her newer music and this has always been the joke when artists start to get a little little long in the tooth in their career you know it's you go see a band they play the hits and then they say well here's something from our new album that's when you go to the bathroom go to the bar you're like okay i don't need to hear your new stuff that's part of the complaint with this is that there are 10 songs on the Plastic Hearts album and she played six of them at this concert oh that is pushing your new material and stacked towards the front she didn't play any of her top 10 hits until the 11th song in an 18 song set list oh my god and now that's that's that's just poor that's poor management on someone's part yeah gotta someone's got to pull her aside and say yes we want to play the new songs but we gotta spread them out you got to get people excited to be there and even if they like the new songs they're not going to have the same energy for them it's also only been out for like a month right so you're just asking for trouble with your with your audience and that's what happened well and if you had done this if you'd done this 10 15 years ago it would have been no problem because the new stuff is the hits those are the things you want to hear right and i that's what i say i think maybe she's becoming this legacy act and hasn't realized oh people just really aren't checking for my new stuff they want that nostalgic rush of hearing the old songs so for that crowd let's just dust one off for them that they did eventually hear late late late into the night at her show 2009 is a classic Party in the USA just to borrow a banger it's a banger but every time i hear that song now i feel like that song could get the Taylor Swift treatment meaning i think she should re-record it like her voice is just so different now every time i hear that song you're right it's still a banger but it stands out to my ear that like Miley doesn't sound like that no she was a teenager then yeah she's 33 now she's almost 34 she'll be 34 i'd like to hear it re-recorded and that would be interesting yeah um but yeah if you gotta wait until late in the show to hear that i don't know but the the choice of songs wasn't just the only problem people also some of the complaints online were that one she didn't actually sing a whole lot it was a whole lot of just pointing at the crowd holding the mic out she didn't even pretend to sing a lot of these songs like Party in the USA i watched a clip of that online and she came in at the second verse sort of and like the chorus the crowd did almost all of it she just stood on stage and smiled and basked in the audience yeah singing but for maybe one song you're having sort of a return to stage kind of moment you want to just bask in the audience's love right for a song that everybody knows and everybody loves but she did it multiple times with a lot of the big songs and i think people were like we didn't come for a sing-along even if even if the audience that's the other thing is even if the audience is gonna sing along they still want to hear you singing yeah they're singing but yeah it's sing along with you not right for you not for you right also some people thought her voice sounded a little strained the stuff i saw it sounded good i mean obviously Miley Cyrus can sing i thought her voice was all right some people said it was very low energy that she danced a little bit here and there and then kind of just paced around the stage a bit. And yeah, and the set list was a little too new. And that's the thing. Is she playing for her fans or is this just nostalgia for millennials? So first of all, I want to say that you could give her some grace. She hadn't performed on a live stage a whole concert in how many years? Four years? Four years. give her a little little grace but i also understand from the fans point of view you're paying a lot of money for this show and you're not necessarily that's the show you're at so it's hard for you to go all right let me give her grace yeah no you you paid your money maybe the first song or two if it comes out of the gate a little rough yes okay she's a little rusty give her a second but the whole show is kind of what people thought about that and again i think a big part was the set list there were 18 songs that she played all together including the the encore uh as i said six of the the 10 songs on her new album Base Persuades were performed she also did two songs from her 2025 album something beautiful which didn't yield any huge huge hits for and she even did a song from her Miley Cyrus's Dead Pets album from 12 years ago with Wayne Coyne from Flaming Lips he came out which is exciting that he was there but that's half the set list is her last two albums and this one random internet only dead pets record she made is kind of a lark so why that's I mean like this is really poor construction of a set list why are you doing that what what is the is it is it ego that I'm still the performer that I I was in my in my heyday and that they're going to eat up whatever I give them so it seems like there's a bit of hubris maybe you don't realize you've gotten a bit out of touch with a section of your audience. Because when she had done this 10, 15 years ago, everyone there is just screaming. They want to hear everything she does. They're so into it. Now you still have those people, but you also have people who are like Miley now in their mid thirties Maybe they've got kids of their own. They got a sitter they got to get back to, or they've had a long day at work and they just want to go back and reminisce about being in high school and they want to hear those hits. And maybe that's not who she wants to be but if that's your audience you gotta can I say I I feel bad for both parties both aggrieved parties here um for the audience because they didn't look the set list was crap and it shouldn't have been put together that way yeah and I get the audience having that reaction but I also am seeing this from the standpoint of Miley Cyrus and some other acts that we're going to talk about it's like how do you adjust to that moment where like you're putting out music and even if your hardcore fans are buying it it doesn't play on the radio the way it used to and radio play isn't it doesn't stream the way it used to it might do what the album can do well the first week or so but only with the hardcore fans and then most people who are coming to your show really just want to hear the hits and as I said she did do them starting with the 11th song in the set list that's when she did We Can't Stop then she did wrecking ball it used to be young The Climb, Party in the USA, Flowers was the last song that's six of the last eight songs performed that's great so all of that was saved until the end of the show that's great it just means that you had a very long food and bathroom break at the beginning of the show and that's not the energy that anybody wants on either side of this and when she came back for the second show at the Bowl and she knew the online criticism had happened and she addressed it a little bit and I kind of get her joke here but also maybe this is me and you being old school people one of the complaints as I said was that there were just backing tracks playing or the backing singers and she was just sort of right not really doing anything so bass persuades was playing and there's a part where she just wasn't singing she was sort of dancing across the stage and this is what she said to the crowd i forgot i'm supposed to sing every line well yeah it's a live concert that she is that's she's angry i mean oh i forgot i'm supposed to that's her tamping down the anger but it's very passive aggressive yeah very passive aggressive but if you're not oh yeah i forgot i'm like i don't and you know backing singers and stuff and letting the singer have a break but also that maybe this is just us being old school and things were actually live you sing live i'll be honest and she can sing live it's not like she can't sing yeah i and to be fair also it's not just young like some of the when we were growing up and the acts that we would see and be like all right they perform live but i'll be honest like the last at least the last the last time i was gonna say last two times maybe just the last time that i saw the stones pretty sure there was some yeah some piped in music and vocals going on uh and and that was disappointing it was really disappointing but i don't know what to do with her like i feel bad for her i can i can hear in just the way she said oh yeah i forgot like that's someone who's really peeved about the reviews and about the fans saying this and feeling she i think she wanted for good reason wanted the adulation of returning to the stage and it didn't go that way and right and the not singing thing i could even forgive that a bit more if it's really intense choreography and dancing i understand that sometimes you're really really into the dancing sure let a track play because you're going for that part of the live spectacle too is seeing someone perform that way right nobody complains when janet jackson yeah has the mic on but she's dancing like you know yeah if somebody like that or even like a Tate McRae or someone who does a lot of choreography if there's parts that are lip sync or as a track well because you're going to be out of breath no matter how in shape you are some of the very athletic things they do on stage for two hours yeah I understand that Miley's not doing serious intense choreography she's just kind of bebopping around and shaking a little bit like she is dancing but it's not like she couldn't sing right but I think some of it that seemed a little maybe petulant even the way she addressed that but there was a more heartfelt moment because one thing i think really did bother her is that people were saying oh this is just like an experiment to see if she could do it she doesn't really care she doesn't want to be here and so she addressed the crowd a little more sincerely and this is what she had to say about it 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 and we find what gets to come with us what continues to fit and you all 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 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 believe that i think she does sincerely care about i do believe it but then how do you explain what happened at least on the first show again i think it goes back thought people would know or care i think it also goes back to the set list like she's probably not getting for her let's say she's doing those first six songs and she's not getting back from the audience what she would like to get when she's especially the first time performing in four years so now yeah her energy does probably go down and then the big hits come on and everyone's like well she's not really into it because yeah the whole the whole energy's screwed from the beginning to me this all starts with the set list but also this is part of as i said just getting on you heard her say it she's acknowledging that it's not the same for her like in some of those old some of those old hits that everybody wants to hear don't hit the same way for her when she's performing them so maybe she's not as jazzed about doing it and that's a tough thing for for people who become very famous when they're young teenagers like she did yeah now she's a 33 year old woman who's had all this life experience and been through all these relationships and all this drama and all the things that happens in life and people still want her to be 15 16 17 years old singing these same songs about listening to Jay-Z at the Hollywood Sign, at the Party in the USA and she's like that's not who i am we heard some of this after the first weekend at Coachella last last year with Justin Bieber that's a lot that's somebody else i was going to bring up because miley and justin were two of the biggest teen stars of the late 2000s and early 2010s and both of them they still perform but it seems they are so detached from that music that is the reason most people are there right and just it's understandable justin's kind of made it clear he's going to perform what he wants to perform i mean that performance that he did for the World Cup was clearly like personal for him this is the kind of performance i want to put on and it's not the high energy you know hits of his of his youth right and he's still 34 right exactly no it's wild that's the weird thing for being i mean miley and justin are certainly not old they're early to mid 30s but as pop stars go they've both been around twenty years yeah they're a little long in the tooth in that sense and it must be frustrating to be trapped in this these teen things and when the new stuff you're doing is not as big as that more so for Miley than Justin Justin's new album did do pretty well and had some hits on it, but it wasn't when Sorry and Love Yourself and even back to Baby and Beauty and the Beat and those songs. People love that. And also because now you're fighting your audience's nostalgia. They want you to be the person you were then because it reminds them of who they were then. But they can do that for a night at a concert and then go on with their lives. But as the performer, you are stuck in this loop of just being nostalgic for someone. You are a prisoner of your own success at a very young age. That's just part of the territory. look not to there are lots of acts that like we were just talking about the Rolling Stones they've been doing this for however long now they took years they took uh some they had some hiatuses in there where they didn't want to be be around each other um and maybe that's what allowed them to sort of reset um i think it's definitely harder when you're a solo act certainly you don't have the energy of your of a group of other bandmates on stage with you right to be a solo act and you're out there carrying the whole thing if you're not feeling the music and if you're not getting it from the crowd yeah things are going to go south we've seen that with Miley with Justin Bieber and even slightly older but big at the same time Justin Timberlake yeah he did his last tour that everything i thought it was you know the world tour that was ruined by the doi bus a lot of complaints in our office Siobhan in our office said I went to it and he did all the new stuff and she's like I don't want to hear that yeah those hits from 2006 and Justin Timberlake doesn't want to do that not just that yeah and I think there is that thing when you have been around for a long time and you're very successful you're still a huge star all of these are still A-list celebrities of course but they are not the driving force of pop culture they used to be people are not as into their new music as they used to be and that's when you become a legacy act you nailed it in that this is exactly that this is the transition to legacy act that they're they're either fighting it or they don't realize that's where they are but the the acts that are legacy and they know their legacy they've figured it out and they make their set list like when you go see U2 yeah they're always going to work in new songs but maybe two or three throughout the night right but they know what they got to play to get the energy up in the with the crowd and the Stones do the same thing and Metallica does the same thing and like that's you just got to know and all those artists there's a couple of signature songs that you of course have to perform every artist has that or else you don't get to perform for decades right but you can also have a deep enough catalog that you can swap some things in and out like when I saw the Stones three years ago they did an online vote they had four songs yes and the audience gets to vote which one they perform and all four of those songs were hits to some degree and would have been great to hear any of them but that's probably keeps it interesting for them that all right we're gonna do this one tonight maybe we haven't dusted this song out in 10 years it's something interesting and Miley and Justin have enough songs they could do that but they want to play the new stuff because that's what they're interested in because they are still young enough to be interested in that uh i think this is going to be interesting next year i think for John Mayer who's in a different way because his music is different but is in that in that same boat now like he was really young he's gone on to you know and he he's in legacy act territory but he's playing all these shows at the Sphere and um it's going to be interesting to see how he mixes in and he's going to have new music also right so how much of that does he force down the audience's throat and you better know is it just your hardcore fans who want to hear anything you do or if you were a big enough popular entertainer like all of these people you're going to have that more casual fan who will spend a lot of money to come see you but in exchange they want those hits they want the songs they remember bring me the hits yeah it's what i paid for and is it maybe also i don't want to be like an old man like these kids are soft but but so much like Bieber canceled his tour not this current one but before that right yeah for mental health issues Shawn Mendes did that we always people younger people make fun of like the Stones and Paul McCartney and Madonna it's like oh these old acts why do they keep doing it why do you keep going out because they can and they want to right and they and it's a slog through a lot of things you know madonna's performing with a knee brace and people say that's a sign you should quit but if she's cleared to do it and she wants to you the show must go on yeah and then you see a lot of younger artists are like i feel bad i don't want to do this but this is this is again i don't want to sound i don't want to sound like an old man but this is we see this in sports also that there are younger athletes who are like i'm gonna put more of a value on my mental well-being on my wellness and you see naomi osaka say like no i'm not i'm not playing in this tournament people go like oh she's soft that's just what they want to do and as if artists want to feel that way then so be it but you also have but the the trade-off is they have to understand that when you come back your fans still want the songs that they want right and you can't enforce them into i will say as you know being the generation that we are we're like these kids are soft but in their defense look at the people we grew up with michael jackson died trying to do the this is it show to get ready for it prince died because he wanted to keep going on stage and kill the pain in his hips we've seen a lot of artists who have destroyed themselves mentally physically even dying to keep the show going on yeah and at a point maybe maybe it is okay to take a break right maybe some of the other some of the peers of miley and justin bieber have figured that out rihanna hasn't toured in 10 years Selena Gomez hasn't toured since 2016 10 years for her see they also became billionaires i was gonna say the key is what they found other revenue streams so if you find something else that's gonna keep paying the bills then you don't have to put so much of an emphasis on going on a tour that you don't really want to go on right but do any of these people need that kind of money and these are all very wealthy people sure or you do what Justin did and you marry someone who's who's got who's got plenty of money coming in he's got the makeup money like he's of course i'm joking like as if Justin Bieber needs money but yeah Hailey's the breadwinner now he just gotta yeah and he just goes and plays little shows in in parks around LA but he seems happier yes and he definitely seems happy if you don't have to work for that money and you you know he sold his publishing so that's not a concern for him he's got plenty of cash with or without his wife right he can do what he wants and there's a beauty in that at your 30s to be like i don't have to please a crowd i don't have to play songs i don't want to play i don't have to do anything i don't want to do and he still has fans who support that that's why the Coachella show for a lot of us we see this guy sitting on stage playing youtube videos that seems horrible for a live show but some people said this is cathartic and it's him embracing his childhood so what's interesting about these two acts we're talking about Justin and Miley is that a lot of people thought one of them would end up being the Super Bowl halftime performer um i think and i don't know if this was part of the disappointment of the Miley fans is that a lot of people went to those shows expecting that she was going to make a big surprise announcement while she's at the Hollywood Bowl that hey y'all guess what i'm to be back in February at the Super Bowl yeah it never happened it didn't happen and i think she would have been a great choice for it if she had come out and done the big hits do you think that she could have done Bangerz but if her album if look and our reporting was that that Harry Styles and Justin Bieber were in the final running and and that Jay-Z himself who has been reported is going to be the halftime performer um but Miley's name if Miley's album and Miley was also there and i believe the good reason if her album didn't drop off the way it did do you think she she gets the like was that the thing where Roc Nation went we really wanted to go with Miley but those numbers i mean maybe scared him off maybe but maybe if they and if you know that was ever a possibility i'm sure they had conversations behind the scenes they would have to know what kind of song she was going to do because when Usher did it a couple years ago Usher's albums have not been doing Confessions numbers in 20 years but he still put on a great show and he had a deep catalog of hits to play right still young enough that he can bring that energy if Miley could bring that energy and was going to do Party in the USA and Flowers and Wrecking Ball and We Can't Stop and all these big songs of course you'd want her yeah she's multi-generational at this point i mean and not just because she's been around a long time but parents like like you know they're they're moms and dads who love a lot of Miley songs she appeals to a lot of people beyond her people her age but yeah maybe they just thought alas it did not happen it did not and the thing with pop music is at a point you don't get a whole lot of second chances if this album has you know if there's starting to be word that her live shows are not that great she's not going to play the hits her new albums dropped off when she does her next album when she tours again will people care at all yeah set list man set list makes a huge difference in how the night goes i I will credit to another legacy act, John Mellencamp, went on tour earlier this year and advertised right away, this is nothing but the hits. He's like, I'm doing all the hits, everyone's going to be happy, and he just did them. And everyone went to see the show, everyone I know saw it and said it was amazing, and that's what, but again, those are people who are used to the fact that they are legacy acts. He's been a legacy act as long as Miley Cyrus has been alive, basically. So they're settled into that. It's awkward. It's bumpy for people. And it must be maybe a little bit galling for, again, the teenagers of the late 2000s pop scene like Miley and Justin to see a contemporary of theirs, Taylor Swift, had the biggest tour ever with the Eras Tour. But that's such a weird, fluky outlier that she can play the new songs and the fans are just ravenous for the new material. But she also, it was the Eras Tour because she said, I'm going to play the hits. Yeah. Yeah. But I agree with you that if you're to compare yourself for anyone to be comparing themselves to Taylor at this stage is unfair to yourself don't do that right don't do that it's not going to work out she's she does her thing everybody else work on what they're doing and that's the thing ultimately you don't have to be Taylor Swift Miley Cyrus is still Miley Cyrus she's still got a good voice she still has fans that love her and anytime if she wants to dust off the hits and do them people will still come and see that but you just have to accept people don't care about my new music and that's gotta especially if you're really an artist when you say it like that Eric I know it's gotta be listen as a man that's you would be a horrible manager that's not how you go in and say you don't sell it to her that way like i know you can't say it that way i listen we gotta we're gonna get in these new songs it's gonna be great okay let's let's let's just warm up the audience let's get them going let's do a little Party in the USA or maybe you want to do Wrecking Ball but let's we got to give them a big one near the front yeah the energy up and then you know and then they're they're keyed in yeah and then they're going to be excited about your new songs man it's probably hard for her too because flowers was such a huge hit just a few years ago yeah and but that wasn't oh miley's just cranking out another hit that was sort of a fluky comeback same way after believe share didn't run the pop charts in the 2000s it was like oh that was a cool and as we get further away from flowers it looks like it was a weird blip yeah and again that's that's probably it's humbling for any artist but especially when you are still in your she's 33 it's crazy you don't want to feel like the bulk of your career behind you at 33 right but that's that's the cruelty of it well just she's poised for a comeback comeback from her comeback um she'll be fine she's gonna be fine she'll work it out this was i agree with her i totally believe her it was not an experiment oh not at all it was just... But I think she was blindsided by that reaction. I don't think she thought that's how people were going to be. Let's get some smiles back on those smilers' faces. That's right. Give her another chance. Don't give up on Miley. No, never. Yeah. That is going to do it for us. We will see you next time on Get to the Hook.