Miley Cyrus performed twice at the Chris Cornell tribute concert last night. I know we all have some Feelings about Miley, in particular her take-on-taking-off of cultures, exploitatively and arbitrarily. So, being that there are so many conflicted feelings about Miley, I posit that often her actual singing ability gets overlooked – agree or disagree?
I’m married to one of those dudes who watches TV like grandpa – that is, he sits there and grumbles about how back then it was like that and now people aren’t as good at x, y, and z. This happens a lot during Saturday Night Live and the musical performances. They sound like sh-t. They can’t sing. This song is terrible, these are Jacek’s critiques almost every week. Except when Miley is on. Miley is probably his favourite SNL guest. Even when she’s singing songs that aren’t great. Every time she performs at Studio 8H, he fires up the full grandad mode, “Now THAT’s live singing, she sounds amazing, what a great voice – see when you have a voice you don’t need all that other sh-t!”
The thing with Miley is that she’s versatile too. She can sing a wide range of music (not as wide of a range as Beyoncé, please don’t come after me Beyhive) or at least she doesn’t have a limited range. Bill Murray has a good story about working on his Christmas show and some other artist bailed out and Miley was brought in to pinch hit at the last minute but she didn’t know the music and was able to pick it up immediately. These are the details about Miley’s work that I wish we’d get more of. Here are clips of both of her performances from last night. I’m still getting used to seeing her with her hair this long again. Just me?
