You’ve always seemed to have a taste for rock, from covering Nirvana as a teen to singing “Say Hello 2 Heaven” at a Chris Cornell tribute last year. “I’m introducing my audience, my generation, to everything that inspired me and created this cocktail of chaos that I am.” She cites Jett, Dolly Parton, and Debbie Harry as the blueprints for Plastic Hearts: making honest records without sacrificing any of the glamour she adores. “My voice is where I hold most of my value, to myself and other people,” she says, stretched out on the U-shaped couch in her studio, drinking a nonalcoholic Heineken “just for the vibe.” For the first time in her career, Cyrus feels like the voice she so values and the words she’s saying are finally being taken seriously. The surgery was successful, but the experience - along with a healthy fear of joining the 27 Club - persuaded her to give up drinking and drugs. Then, in November 2019, she faced another cosmic curveball: emergency surgery for Reinke’s edema, often caused by overuse of the vocal cords. Cyrus followed the breakup with a pair of tabloid-hounded relationships, with The Hills’ Kaitlynn Carter and longtime friend Cody Simpson. The pair, who had been engaged for six years, got hitched a month later, but then filed for divorce just eight months after that. In late 2018, the Malibu home she shared with then-fiancé Liam Hemsworth burned down due to the Woolsey Fire. To get to that place, though, she had to spend two years being put through the wringer. I take my mental and physical health a lot more seriously than I ever did before.” Gallery: Photos From the Cover Shoot “Someone said to me the other day, ‘I think of you as a free bird that can’t be held down,’ ” she says. The irony of Plastic Hearts paying tribute to some of rock’s wildest years is that Cyrus herself is the most centered she’s ever been. Photographed on location at the Chateau Marmont Hair by Cervando Maldonado at the Wall Group. Photograph by Brad Elterman for Rolling Stone. Miley Cyrus photographed in Los Angeles on November 10th, 2020. She ended up covering Poison’s hit ballad “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” on 2010’s Can’t Be Tamed, the first album she released as an adult singer ditching her teen-pop past. “One of my first concerts ever was Poison and Warrant,” Cyrus says, noting she almost broke her leg when she climbed onto a folding chair so she could see. It’s an exciting move, but not out of nowhere. She was way ahead of them: Plastic Hearts is a raucous tribute to the synths, power ballads, and general debauchery of the Eighties, with help from guests like Joan Jett, Stevie Nicks, Dua Lipa, Billy Idol, Mark Ronson, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, and Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins. Her livestreamed covers of songs like Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and the Cranberries’ “Zombie” have gone viral, and by the time she announced Plastic Hearts, listeners were all but begging her to release a rock album. In August, she dropped “Midnight Sky,” a cosmic, Stevie Nicks-sampling Eighties-pop burner, then spent the next several months proving she can sing the hell out of almost anything. In the past few months, many listeners have heard Cyrus’ voice as if for the first time. And today, sporting a dirty-blond mullet, combat boots, and a CBGB-printed vest, she does look like she’d be more at home on the stoop of Trash & Vaudeville in New York’s East Village with the rest of the punk kids. At first, the ritzy, gated community seemed a bit “normcore” for her. Cyrus moved here, to the enclave of Hidden Hills, in September 2019, settling in next to neighbors like the Kardashians, Drake, and Jessica Simpson. The space is homey, but there are still touches of the surreal and “rainbow shit everywhere,” as she puts it, like neon psychedelic paintings and multicolored sculptures sitting next to large coffee-table books on David Bowie and Pink Floyd. “You can hear me screaming down here?” she asks, surprised her voice was loud enough to bounce off the zebra-print soundboards, down a staircase decorated in vintage Playboys, and into her living room. Cyrus has been belting the chorus for the past hour, in a growl that once made Waylon Jennings ask her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, why he let a three-year-old smoke cigarettes. Her new album, Plastic Hearts, has long been done, but the pair still have more tricks up their sleeves, like a cover of Metallica’s 1992 single “Nothing Else Matters” for an upcoming compilation. She’s been holed up in her home studio all afternoon with producer Andrew Watt. The sun is just beginning to set in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley and Miley Cyrus is busy “tweaking on some harmonies,” as she proudly puts it.
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