Miley Cyrus “Used To Be Young” on 10th anniversary of infamous VMA performance
Miley Cyrus' emotional new track "Used To Be Young" is yet another reminder that the pop star has changed
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There are certain cultural moments that transcend time to be burned into the annals of pop history forever. Picture: a 20-year-old Miley Cyrus in a nude, latex bikini set, tongue out, foam finger on one hand, bent over in front of Robin Thicke on the VMA stage. How much ink has been spilled about that moment? How many (white) people learned about twerking for the first time because of it?
Even for a young woman whose career had already seen its fair share of controversies, the 2013 VMAs was a seismic event. “Not only was culture changed, but my life and career were changed forever,” Cyrus told Wonderland (via E! News) in 2018, noting that all the attention on her inspired her to use her platform for activism. (Cyrus began the Happy Hippie Foundation, which focuses on homelessness amongst LGBTQ+ youth, in 2014.) But not all of the repercussions of the performance were so positive. “It became something that was expected of me. I didn’t want to show up to photo shoots and be the girl who would get my tits out and stick out my tongue,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2017. “In the beginning, it was kind of like saying, ‘Fuck you. Girls should be able to have this freedom or whatever.’ But it got to a point where I did feel sexualized.”
Stuck in the shadow of the twerk heard ‘round the world, Cyrus rebranded, then re-rebranded, then re-re-re… well, you get the picture. Like many great pop stars, she mastered the art of reinvention, creating new eras for herself before artist “eras” became the term du jour. She would never be the precocious Disney kid again, but she’d be lots of other things. “People get told that it’s a bad thing to change,” she said in that Harper’s Bazaar interview. “Like, people will say, ‘You’ve changed.’ And that’s supposed to be derogatory. But you are supposed to change all the time.”
Maybe what truly sets Cyrus apart from other major stars who underwent multiple reinventions (Madonna, for example) is how young Cyrus was when she was radically shifting through pop personalities. “Even though it’s not who I am/I’m not afraid of who I used to be,” she sang on the title track of her album Younger Now, just four years after the VMAs uproar. Fresh-faced, fully clothed, and with a bit of country twang, she optimistically sang, “Change is a thing you can count on/I feel so much younger now.” At the time, she was only 25 years old.
Now 30, Cyrus is still forgiving of her younger self, though her reflection on those days is perhaps tinged with a bit more melancholy. On the tenth anniversary of that iconic and infamous VMA performance, she released “Used To Be Young,” something of a bonus track to the album Endless Summer Vacation, released earlier this year. “These lyrics were written almost 2 years ago at the beginning of my ESV. It was at a time I felt misunderstood,” she wrote on Instagram. “I have spent the last 18 months painting a sonic picture of my perspective to share with you. The time has arrived to release a song that I could perfect forever. Although my work is done, this song will continue to write itself everyday. The fact it remains unfinished is a part of its beauty. That is my life at this moment ….. unfinished yet complete.”
Miley Cyrus nods to the Disney days
“Used To Be Young” sounds something like the tired older sister of “Younger Now.” “Me and who you say I was yesterday/Have gone our separate ways,” she sings. In the music video, Cyrus wears a Mickey Mouse t-shirt as a nod to those Disney days and tears up as she delivers the chorus: “I know I used to be crazy/I know I used to be fun/You say I used to be wild/I say I used to be young.”
It’s not necessarily the most original message—in fact, Cyrus said it herself, differently, on “Younger Now” a few years ago. Having to repeat it anew on “Used To Be Young” speaks to the frustration of continually being pegged to her past. In Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana documentary, she notes that celebrities tend to become “frozen at the age they get famous.” Well, Miley Cyrus was just 13 years old when she became world famous, and only 20 when she became infamous. As much as our culture is becoming cognizant of the damage we do to child stars, it’s easy to forget just how youthful she was gracing the VMA stage, and how young she’s been in all those major moments and mistakes lived out in the public eye.
The most marked difference between “Younger Now” and “Used To Be Young” is right there in the titles. Though she’s still a young woman, Cyrus apparently no longer feels “Younger Now” than she did before. Instead, “Used To Be Young” has a bit more distance and perspective, and evokes a certain world-weary quality. To be sure, she’s probably lived more lives in the last decade than some do in a lifetime. And though it’s hard to imagine Cyrus hanging up her mic any time soon, it does serve as another gentle reminder that certain chapters in her life have closed. “You tell me time has done changed me/That’s fine, I’ve had a good run,” she sings. “I know I used to be crazy/That’s cause I used to be young.”
41 Comments
She certainly wasn’t sexualised by me in those days, I wanted to see much, much less.
She got a lot of panties in a twist with that one, I fuckin love when that happens.
Are any of these panties for sale?
What do I look like here, a Japanese vending machine?
I’d like to smoke a joint with Miley Cyrus almost as much as I’d like to smoke a joint with Willie Nelson.
She’s still young
Yeah, I’m seeing a lot of 30 year olds doing the “Lol, I’m so old now, I can barely stay up past midnight anymore” thing.
Stop it. You don’t even know yet.
It’s just part of the cycle we all go through.
All. And always have. To be fair, thirty is a LOT OLDER than twenty. The weirdest thing about getting older (I’m 57, somehow), is: ten years ago, twenty years seemed like a really long time. Now, thirty years is, very clearly, nothing. Nothing at all. Where does the time go?
And all our “cycles” are in sync.
Imagine being 30 and singing “I use to be young”?I mean you aren’t a child but you are still not old yet.
Stevie Nicks was 27 when she sang “Now I’m getting older, too.”
Kurt Cobain sang “now I’m bored and old” and he died at 27.
Depends on how much is packed in those three decades. She’s definitely lived a few different lifetimes in that span.
“I used to be young,” as in I used to not have to worry about employment, rent, health insurance, student loan repayments, taxes, possible kids, the likelihood of greater health concerns, etc. etc. These things are very real at 30, and nonexistent as a teenager.But of course it’s all relative. “I’m older than I was and younger than I’ll be,” and all that.
You’re older than you’ve ever been
And now you’re even older
And now you’re even older
And now you’re even older
You’re older than you’ve ever been
And now you’re even older
And now you’re older still
It’s funny how different events put different frames on your age. I’m in my late thirties and feeling so old most days. But I got bowel cancer a couple of years ago, and the phrase I kept hearing was “But you’re so young!” Odd way to get a reality check.
It really does seem crazy now, at least to me, but it was not THAT long ago (within my lifetime, anyway) that 30 was considered the end of something major – and the beginning of the end of everything. Especially for women.Heck, if you know the show “Company”, it’s structured around the protaganist Bobby having an aging/maturity related crisis which is brought about by his…thirtieth birthday.
And in Victorian novels if a woman reached that age and wasn’t married, well, she better enjoy being single because her chance was up.
As someone in their 30s, I do feel old compared to where I was a decade ago. Back then, only one of my friends was married and no one had kids or were even thinking about having them. It was normal to see everyone important to me often and the things I worried about seem so small compared to now.So yea…I feel old. And I think it’s normal for anyone reflecting on where they were 10-15 years ago to feel the same. It doesn’t mean I think I am physically old.
It’s just funny when you are in your 40s and hear about those in their 30s saying they feel old. I suspect 50 year olds think the same of us. I’m just bitter because I’m 45 this year and for really the time in my life, my health is showing its age. Not just the aches and pains of years of joint damage on my arms and legs but worse shit. Cardiac scares and GI problems. So for me I’ve felt “not young” for a while but this year is the first one where I feel old. If that makes sense.
It makes sense and it sucks you have those issues. But to me, feeling old is about being wistful about a time that has passed you by. That could be a few years ago or it could be decades ago.
Wonder Woman Did It!!!
Lotta salty old people in the comments forgetting how old you think you are when you turn 30, but it really is a system shock: you spend your 20s thinking you’re an adult but still acting like and being treated like a teenager. Around 30 people start treating you like a regular adult, and one bad night of sleep can ruin the following three days; it’s jarring af.
Eh, I didn’t think I was old when I turned 30. I could still do most of the physical shit I could do in my teens and 20s.Now 40? Yeah, that’s when the whole “throw your back out for a day because you sneezed” bullshit started in.
I just hit 50 and it’s even more true now.
45 for me. And all at once. Good lord. Ow.
There’s a physical side and a mental side. Physically, my thirties were great. Mentally, I felt…not young.
I agree and posted something similar to a comment here. People confuse feeling old with being old. Feeling old is just about realizing how different your life is.
don’t remember any of this
We Can’t Stop was a great song. So was Cannonball. I liked twerking naked Miley.
I’m still not over the knee-jerk revulsion I had for her in the wake of the twerk-heard-round-the-world. Something about that performance — and her public persona in general, at that time in her life — was incredibly off-putting to me.Glad she had a good time. Glad she’s different now, too, though.
Those are some seriously glassy eyeballs! Note to self: get more edibles this weekend.
She’s smoked her voice into nothing but a scratchy whine now. Too bad, she used to be able to sing.
Miley used to be able to move her eyebrows.
Source?
Her cocked and waggled brows in that VMA performance ten years ago vs the video linked in this article. It’s obviously her damn face, but I’m upset that a 30 year old woman thinks she needs to utilize botox and cheek fillers at all let alone to this degree.
(I also do know that her makeup is heavily contoured and computer enhanced, but she still can’t emote above her eyes other than straining her eyebrows slightly upward).
I know! It’s so frustrating that they’re all independently choosing to do this. It’s not like there’s any pressure to stay young-looking and flawless; everyone accepts a woman looking like she’s over 30 except the woman herself!
Who is this comment vs?
Mütley Cyrü$ announces Used To Be 2 Fast To Bë In Löve
David Bowie changed his music and image every 5 years for about three decades. Think I’ll stop typing and go listen to that now.