Miley Cyrus turns 24 today (November 23) and – to celebrate her big, Flaming Lips-collaborating year – we trace the maddest moments in her fearless career.
Before she even released the Jessie J-penned pop fluff hit ‘Party In The USA’, this topless Annie Leibovitz shoot from 2008 hinted at things to come. The Italian headline reads, “What’s happened to Miley Cyrus? Everyone’s scandalised by the sexual transformation of Hannah Montana, but look at this photo taken at 15: doesn’t that already say something?”
This interview was the first big feature on Cyrus following the VMAs. It presented her as someone who made her own decisions, organised her own skydives and chose her own tattoos. Even if they were “ROLLING” and “$TONE” on two separate feet.
In an era when even smoking tobacco indoors has a touch of rebellion, smoking pot on a stage in front of millions has to be one of the most badass things done at the EMAs in years. Granted, she was in Amsterdam, but it was a breath of funky air for ceremony, whose previous most outrageous moment was 11 years earlier in 2002 – when, deplorably, P Diddy paid a woman to get naked.
Here are some of the things that happened during Cyrus’ Bangerz tour: she wore bondage gear to Alt-J’s ‘Fitzpleasure’; she came down a slide shaped like a tongue; she paid homage to marijuana; she threw money with her face on it at the audience; screens projected images of genitalia-shaped sweets; she rode a giant, flying dog. We’ll leave it there.
Miley and Madonna looked almost like mother and daughter at Miley’s MTV Unplugged show in January 2014, where like an embarrassing mum Madonna even says, “Break it down now”. The pair grind together like pros, performing their odd medley, ‘Don’t Tell Me We Can’t Stop’, with a jarringly wistful Americana backing.
Billy-Bob teeth are freakily misaligned gnashers used most frequently on Halloween. Miley advertised her own ‘Miley-Bob’ version in November 2014, and they sold out in less than an hour.
Naked again, and this time it’s for NYC’s indie magazine Paper during an interview in which she explains why she became vegan. Now she’s fighting for animal rights, so there’s totally a reason for her to be covered in pigsty muck.
This is one of nine alternative covers for the new edition of Candy, the first fashion publication dedicated to the trans community. Here Miley is a topless police officer sucking off a truncheon – another of the alt covers shows her completely naked, with her head covered up by a white cat.
