\u201cFor me, performance can\u2019t be everything,\u201d Miley Cyrus declared on Friday night, and you had to admire her choice of setting: onstage at the Hollywood Bowl in front of approximately 18,000 people who\u2019d turned up precisely to see her perform.<\/p>\n
A star since her teenage days on the Disney Channel\u2019s \u201cHannah Montana<\/a>,\u201d the 33-year-old musician and actor was maybe half an hour into the first of two sold-out concerts at the iconic hillside amphitheater \u2014 a place close to Cyrus\u2019 heart, as she explained in a videotaped intro recalling a gig she and her fianc\u00e9, Maxx Morando, caught last year by the French band Air.<\/p>\n \u201cI step into wine, which soaks onto my boots,\u201d she said in the dramatic black-and-white clip. \u201cI don\u2019t mind stained leather \u2014 it only adds to their character.\u201d<\/p>\n Cyrus\u2019 shows were billed as part of the rollout of her latest album, \u201cBass Persuades<\/a>,\u201d which came out in September (and which found her dropping her last name to go simply by Miley). Yet the two-night engagement is really meant to mark her grand return to the stage after she said a few years ago that she\u2019d sworn off touring because it was too harmful to her mental health.<\/p>\n Is \u201cgrand\u201d the right word for a comeback as equivocal as this one? Despite all the hype surrounding this weekend\u2019s concerts, Cyrus spoke again and again Friday about how much less space for performance she has in her life these days than she used to; she talked repeatedly about her quest to balance her fans\u2019 emotional needs with her own.<\/p>\n At one point, after singing a couple of numbers on a small B-stage about halfway up the bowl, she walked through the crowd back to the main stage, gripping and grinning the entire way. Then she described the toll her trip had just taken: \u201cI appreciate each of you guys reaching out and touching me, and me getting to feel you. But I do want to say \u2014 it is a lot for me,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is a little bit overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n In an era of parasocial pop stardom, the radical honesty of Cyrus\u2019 approach \u2014 her clear-eyed appraisal of the relationship that binds an idol and her audience \u2014 was kind of a thrill to behold. The problem was that her singing for the most part wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n As she described being overwhelmed, her band slowly revved up her song \u201cWrecking Ball.\u201d It\u2019s one of the great power ballads of the last 25 years, with a chorus as cathartic as any in modern pop; Cyrus, the showbiz lifer, surely understood the payoff she was building toward. Except when the moment arrived, she inexplicably dodged it, skipping the song\u2019s first chorus and soft-pedaling the second \u2014 an anticlimax for the ages.<\/p>\n Indeed, Cyrus let the audience and her backup singers handle vocals for many of her biggest hits, among them \u201cThe Climb,\u201d \u201cParty in the U.S.A.\u201d and \u201cWe Can\u2019t Stop\u201d; during that last one, she twerked for a second, evoking memories of the infamous 2013 MTV performance that briefly scandalized a nation.<\/p>\n She sang more heartily in songs from \u201cBass Persuades,\u201d which would\u2019ve been better news if that tuneless mishmash of bleary synths and dated club beats weren\u2019t one of the year\u2019s least likable pop records. (This month Variety reported<\/a> that, after debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the album took the biggest fall in chart history in its second week of release.)<\/p>\n The paradox of Cyrus\u2019 career at this stage is that she wants to do the thing that nobody wants her to do \u2014 \u201cBass Persuades\u201d is just the latest in a string of crummy LPs \u2014 and doesn\u2019t want to do the thing that everybody wants her to do. Truly, her bad taste should be studied: On Friday, she welcomed Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips to the B-stage for a duet on \u201cKaren Don\u2019t Be Sad,\u201d from the miserable psych-rock record they made together in 2015. Naturally, Cyrus said it was her favorite of her albums.<\/p>\n