for fans of: Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Iggy Azalea
"I'm not going down without a motherfucking fight!" the world's most controversial human, the iridescent Miley Cyrus, screams and solidifies this title as she rockets down a giant tongue slide and reemerges back on the Bangerz Tour. After a health scare last month, which the singer assures the fans was not a drug overdose *phew* and actually due to "bitch ass nurses", the 21-year-old Tennessee native has refused to come back without the biggest spectacle your eyes will ever behold.
Miley's performance followed a set from the ever-cool Californian rocker Sky Ferreira. I was blessed enough to be seeing Sky perform live for the third time lucky that night and, as always, one of the most talented female artists in the game did not disappoint. Though my friends and I were the only ones in our section going absolutely chicken-oriental mental, Sky shined. Despite the dodgy sound technicians and oh-so ironically messing up the start of 'Everything is Embarassing', her performance was collected and enviably chic as she showcased the stand-outs from her acclaimed debut album 'Night Time, My Time' (one of my albums of the year).
As soon as Miss Cyrus burst onto the stage in a hullabaloo, the F-bombs began to fly all over the place. Parents around me looked shocked and disgusted, but how could you be? Reportedly, The O2 has received an ocean of complaints about Bangerz Tour for its profanities and provocative nature. I'm sorry, but what else would you expect from a Miley Cyrus concert? Inevitably, you have seen her infamous antics such as her VMA performance and her array of music videos: Hannah Montana this ain't! That's about as idiotic as me rocking up to Starbucks with a coffee allergy and ordering a latte. Blame yourselves for exposing your children to what you deem as inappropriate instead of pushing the fault onto her for taking this step in her artistry. Besides, have you not listened to her album before you purchased tickets? Obviously the six year old behind me had as she was sassily screaming the lyrics to the Pharrell masterwork '#GETITRIGHT' (I been layin' in this bed / All night long / Don't you think it's time / To get it on?) as Miley was rolling around a bed imitating an orgy. Disturbing on the parent's part, to say the least.
Cyrus mixed the trash glam of Rihanna with the less-polished theatrics of Lady Gaga with the crazy cartoonisms of Katy Perry to create chaos. One of the slightly more... eccentric parts of the show was her worshiping and grinding up against a kind of Sphinx-style 30 foot blow up of her dead dog... I mean, that's when it got a bit too weird. Twerking midgets, twerking chickens, a surprisingly little amount of twerking by Miley herself. Bonkerz and utterly insane. Like a carnival on LSD. Her costume game, however, was out in full force: though she pretty much shoved her vagina into the audience's face while riding a ghetto fab gold car during the Hip-Hop jam anthem 'Love, Money, Party', her money-clad leotard was cause for serious envy.
And, honestly? Miley doesn't display the plastic, bonafide transparency that many starlets seem to exude; she has charm and charisma, and her between-song banter is indisputably genuine - even when she was rambling about the health benefits of weed and encouraging the audience to get stoned. Speaking from my own experiences as someone who isn't easily influenced by other and can easily resist peer pressures and such (thanks mum x), I can see how easily impressionable kids could get swayed by these kind of talks and perhaps it's not the greatest thing in the world to encourage your fans to be in possession of Class B drugs... But she also uses her position in a positive way and is an advocate for a multitude of causes such as animal rights, however in this show she preached to her fans about the importance of equality and being yourself. Usually the young and famous are perceived as thoughtless dummies, but I honestly think Miley is smart. She's judged purely on the basis of how she sexualises her body and talent in order to sell records, and maybe she does, but is she not garnering the attention that's she's so cleverly set out to achieve? She identifies herself, and rightly so, as "one of the biggest feminists" and that was emphasied in her speech about being yourself after her hit ballad 'Adore You' as she encouraged the audience to celebrate the LGBT society. Let's be fair, it's fantastic that there's a pop culture figurehead to shine this guiding light for her fans to be educated and beautifully intellectual young men and women who embrace feminism and are accepting of those from whatever background in which they come from. Preach!
The highlight of the show was not, in fact, Miley straddling a giant hotdog while flying over the audience singing 'Someone Else' (yes! really!), but was her performance on the 'B' stage. Here she acoustically performed the sensual 'Rooting For My Baby', as well as a whopping four covers: cool points for the wholly appropriate Arctic Monkey's 'Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?', a beautiful rendition of 'You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go' by Bob Dylan, her Radio 1 Live Lounge of Lana Del Rey's 'Summertime Sadness', and her godmother Dolly Parton's classic 'Jolene' - which is probably the first time ever that Jolene has been called a C U Next Tuesday! This is another indication of Miley's smartness as it's unlikely that anyone, without seeing her perform live, would believe that she is hugely talented and has a wicked sense of humour. The tone of her voice is sweet but strong, and acoustically the audience really feels her country music roots and her sheer delight to be back onstage, keenly lapping up every second.
She closed her whopping 21 song set with a string of her biggest hits. Surprisingly, 'We Can't Stop' lacked the fireworks that the infamous 'Wrecking Ball' ballad set off, before she closed her return to the stage in a Union Jack leotard for the pop classic (we will be singing this for generations to come) 'Party in the USA'. The frankly rather adorable Miley Cyrus performs for the shock factor, and I think that's why people don't understand her. Once that fades, we'll see the emergence of an icon. Until then, she'll shock us until our eyes are raw.
