Miley Cyrus reveals she doesn’t drink or smoke dope now — because she needs to be clear headed
“THIS record,” announces Miley Cyrus, “makes me the proudest I’ve ever felt about any work I’ve done.
“It’s a record which says how I feel about my life, about politics and about my relationship. These are my words.”
Miley Cyrus is discussing her new and very different album, Younger Now, which she has written and produced.
It shows a more serious, grown-up side of the rebellious starlet who became famous as a 14-year-old on Disney’s Hannah Montana before, as a pop star, she twerked, stuck her tongue out a lot and performed with a giant blow-up penis at G-A-Y.
She says: “Making my own record and saying what I want to say has given me credibility.
“This gives me more power to go out and tell people to listen to me. So many people put words into my mouth and make me into what they think I am.”
It’s lunchtime in New York and Cyrus is sitting for her first interview of the day at The Dream Downtown Hotel.
Journalists have been invited to a special playback of a number of her news songs, while last night Cyrus played a special invitationonly gig at Manhattan’s Electric Room. There she mixed up new songs such as Malibu and Inspired with older hits like Party In The USA, plus an impressive cover of her godmother Dolly Parton’s Jolene.
The gig was straight after filming a week-long special of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. You’d expect Cyrus to be tired but, on arrival, she buzzes around chatting to her label execs and manager.
“Which songs have you heard?” she asks in her famously raspy voice.
“I hope you liked them. I’ve worked so hard on this — just me and my producer Oren (Yoel).
“I said to Liam (Hemsworth, her Hunger Games actor fiancé) this morning that this is the first time that I feel like I’m promoting my own true record.”
Dressed in a tight cream trouser suit that shows off her slim figure, Cyrus jokes about its annoying pockets, asking whether I can see them when she stands up.
Sixth album Younger Now is about positivity and taking action. Cyrus was inspired to have her say after Donald Trump was elected US President last year.
The singer, who had originally supported Bernie Sanders at the start of the presidential campaign, tells me: “It takes something like our election to wake people up and for them to say, ‘We’ve got to start coming together and make a change’. It’s hard when something seems so much bigger than you.”
After Clinton won the Democratic nomination, Cyrus launched #HopefulHippies to support her youth-activism foundation, Happy Hippie, which encourages people to “turn emotion into action”. She says: “You realise how much music can really change and affect people, and affect the world and affect things politically.
“Something that I’ve always wanted to be really responsible with is my platform.
“I think by being rebellious at that point, it is encouraging other people to be who they want to be.
“Don’t ever allow people to label you, and let people be who they want to be.
“My country is divided and I’ve got to be open with the way I approach people with my opinions if people are going to listen and change.” Throughout her career, Cyrus has been involved with charities, including Amnesty International, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Make-A-Wish Foundation, HIV/Aids work and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation among many.
“I love to create a trend of people being happy and taking care of one another and people getting involved in philanthropy,” she says.
“People need to take risks and say what they think and feel. Even if that means fighting for people’s rights, I feel like that about LGBT rights.
“I never thought that today we would be sitting in a country where gay marriage is legal.”
Cyrus says making herself happy has always been her priority, so making her own album has been fulfilling.
“I was so happy making Bangerz and Party In the USA,” she says.
“I love the collaborators I’ve worked with and I never want to be someone that shuts the doors on other people’s ideas, but it was really important for me to get on paper and record all of my ideas and what I think.”
One important song for Cyrus is Inspired, which was in celebration of Pride Month and to highlight “the desperate cry for more love in this world”. It also mentions her dad, singer Billy Ray Cyrus.
She says: “I don’t think anyone else could write that, but me. That’s how I feel about the world that we are in.
“Even the part talking about my dad, no one else knows those memories but me. And that really hits people’s hearts, too.
“Singing about family is also really important, and my relationship with my dad has been something that everyone has been so involved in my whole life.
“Even with the TV show — Cyrus vs Cyrus: Design and Conquer, which was a reality interior-design programme focused around her mum Tish and sister Brandi — getting to know me and my dad as a team and a family, I think people are really happy to be let back into my family.”
The track Cyrus is most proud of on the album is pop anthem Thinkin’ — and then on Rainbowland she sings with Dolly Parton.
She says: “My godmother has an amazing way of setting that line of showmanship, but also writes her personal diaries in her music.”
And Cyrus has been busy, too, helping little sister Noah, 17, who earlier this year released her debut album NC-17.
“I want people to really respect Noah,” says Cyrus. “For me, it was hard growing up in this industry because people were so hard on me, either in the way I looked or sounded.
“I was judged more than I should’ve been as a kid. It’s crazy that adults can judge and write horrible things about a child.
“So until the day she turns 18, I want people to respect her as the kid that she is.
“I’m protective, as I know how much it hurt and how much I pretended that sometimes it didn’t. I would rather take it tenfold than have someone do it to her.
“I once showed up at my brother’s school when kids were bullying him. I showed up and I bullied the bullies.
“It didn’t make me feel any better. But they never messed with him again.”
Cyrus spent a lot of time in Nashville making her recording, which was a welcome change from Malibu, where she has a home.
“I’ve been spending more time in Nashville because I do really miss home,” she admits.
“I am from Nashville, so living in LA for so long felt like such a concrete jungle for me.
“Even sitting here right now, I’ve been promoting a song called Malibu and talking about how I miss Nashville a lot.
“I am trying to learn how to be more in the moment and love what I am doing.”
Cyrus recently moved in with Hemsworth, who she reunited with last year after they split in 2013.
The Australian actor, 27, bought the Malibu mansion in 2014 and the couple now share their home with their seven dogs, two miniature horses and two pigs.
“I’ve found my peace and sanity there,” says Cyrus. “I surrounded myself in dogs and I had a pig living on my couch. That made me feel like I was at home.
“Finding that space, being with nature again, having trees, clear skies and sun, has helped. I couldn’t find that in LA. I have this freedom — not only in my relationship but because I don’t feel so trapped in Malibu.”
Cyrus's first single off the album, Malibu, is a love song inspired by Hemsworth.
“It’s about where I am in my life and my relationship. It’s just so literal about where we are that it’s kind of cool for Liam. Though, he’s been the inspiration for many songs.”
I ask Cyrus about the rumours that she and Hemsworth plan to run off to Las Vegas to get married. “It’s crazy,” she laughs. “Every day someone knows something about my life that I don’t.
“Right now my priorities are my music and working on The Voice. As two young people, we have an idea of what commitment is to one another.”
A Week Without You, another song about Hemsworth, was inspired by Elvis Presley. “I was thinking about Blue Hawaii when I wrote that song,” Cyrus says. “I want everyone to hear it.
“I was thinking about Elvis in the jail scene singing Beach Boy Blues.”
Cyrus says the theme of Younger Now is to enjoy the moment and be happy in yourself.
“I’m not one to preach and I don’t want to put myself up on a pedestal, but Younger Now is about where I am as a person.
“As we get older, we start caring less about what people think and start to have that childlike spirit again. When I was a kid I used to just run around in a tutu and cowboy boots. I think we should be able to still do that if we want to.
“We shouldn’t have to worry what we look like or try and be the perfect woman just to be taken seriously.
“That’s why my mom is my best friend. She is a great role model. She has always given me the appropriate motherly boundaries but also freedom.”
In the past, Cyrus has been open about smoking marijuana. But when we meet, she says she has not smoked or drunk alcohol for weeks.
“I think if people told me to, I wouldn’t do it,” she laughs. “For me, I wanted to be clear-headed — it’s part of living in the moment.
“There are many intelligent and inventive people who are marijuana activists but, for me as an entertainer, it doesn’t allow me to have as much energy as I’d like to have or to focus on my work.
“I really want to be clear about my music and what I am doing.I want everyone else to be as well.”
Having been in the spotlight for more than a decade and recently releasing her most credible and mature album,does Cyrus feel older than 24?
“I feel like I am younger now,” she answers.
“In that if I want to wear a bow one day, I will. When you are a kid, you may want to wear a baseball jersey.
“When I was a kid, my first record that I wanted to buy was Blink-182 because of my brothers, and Britney Spears because of my sisters. I was allowed to do that.
“As you get older, people tell you that you don’t know who you are and you can’t do that. Well, you can.
“I also feel very bold. Whether it is my gender — Cyrus identifies as pansexual — or how I feel about anything in my life, I just feel like me. I hope people can always find that freedom.
“It’s a really liberating feeling, to feel like nothing.
“I feel like everything all at once, that is how I feel.”
Younger Now - Four stars
1. Younger Now
2. Malibu
3. Rainbowland
4. Week Without You
5. Miss You So Much
6. I Would Die For You
7. Thinkin’
8. Bad Mood
9. Love Someone
10. She’s not him
11. Inspired
- The album Younger Now is out today.
