{"id":885740,"date":"2026-10-17T17:34:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T17:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/885740\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T17:34:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T17:34:16","slug":"miley-cyrus-confronts-stardom-at-las-hollywood-bowl-concert-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/885740\/","title":{"rendered":"Miley Cyrus Confronts Stardom at LA’s Hollywood Bowl: Concert Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAfter she descended from a B-stage in the middle of the stands at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday night, Miley Cyrus sat hunched over on the main stage<\/a>, visibly sapped by the 200-foot trek back to the spotlight. \u201cYou guys gave me so much energy, but you also took a little energy out of me, too,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is a lot for me, if you could imagine walking from where I was through each of you and feeling how much passion and how much love each of you radiates to me. And I appreciate you so much. But it is a lot for me and it is a little bit overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s an admission that a seasoned pop star \u2014 one of our biggest and brightest, mind you \u2014 would rarely deign to make at their first major show in years. And yet, it felt like the thesis for the first of two concerts Cyrus is performing in Los Angeles in support of her latest album \u201cBass Persuades,\u201d a record with a few bright moments but lacking the singular vision that defined some of her strongest work. Across the nearly two-hour set, Cyrus appeared at odds with the pressures of being a generational talent, proudly chasing her muse with full-throated renditions of fresher, more opaque material while letting the audience carry the vocals on her biggest hits. It was confounding, oftentimes bizarre and, in the end, strangely entertaining, a snapshot of a megastar who, after all this time, is still figuring out what artist she wants to become.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s the thrill for anyone who has followed Cyrus\u2019 career since she emerged as a Disney star with \u201cHannah Montana,\u201d trying on different styles while navigating the mercurial sound of mainstream pop. She\u2019s shape-shifted at a moment\u2019s notice, chasing massive hits with pivots into deeply unconventional genres and sounds, beginning with her reinventive \u201cBangerz\u201d era in 2013 and its subsequent global trek, her last extensive tour. Since then, she\u2019s remained prolific and expansive, traipsing from psych-pop (\u201cMiley Cyrus<\/a> & Her Dead Petz\u201d) to glam rock (\u201cPlastic Hearts\u201d) and, perhaps not accidentally, stumbling into a few massive hits along the way, with songs like \u201cWrecking Ball\u201d and \u201cFlowers\u201d that she let the audience carry during the Bowl show.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Friday night, Cyrus hewed closely to her new material with tracks from \u201cBass Persuades\u201d and a few from 2025\u2019s wildly ambitious \u201cSomething Beautiful.\u201d She\u2019s performed so rarely that nearly half the songs on the setlist were live debuts: Over the past few years, Cyrus staged only two fans-only shows in Los Angeles and Paris, appearances that reinforced her strengths as a performer without heeding to the pressures \u2014 interviews, TV appearances, radio drops \u2014 that come with it.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet Cyrus was quick to ground the show in her reality, one where she\u2019s learned to balance her public and private lives. \u201cFor somebody that likes to keep life fun, and likes to jump out of airplanes and be spontaneous, doing the same thing for your entire life can lose its shine if you don\u2019t continue to give yourself that pressure and polish to create something beautiful, which is the life that I\u2019m living,\u201d she said, leading into the title track from \u201cSomething Beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Cyrus, that\u2019s meant stretching the boundaries of pop music and, by proxy, pop stardom. All bets were off as she opened with \u201cOrbit,\u201d a very languid ballad about the magnetism of romance. Already the pace was unpredictable, giving way to the zapping synth-pop of \u201cDifferent Religion\u201d (with featuring and opening act Model\/Actriz) and Fentanyl-rejecting \u201cBass Persuades.\u201d She let her freak flag fly with Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne on the B stage for the group\u2019s \u201cDo You Realize??\u201d and their collaboration \u201cKaren Don\u2019t Be Sad,\u201d and strutted across the catwalk at the lip of the stage for \u201cWalk of Fame,\u201d one of the more supermodel songs in her discography.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid her musings on fame, she struck a truly emotive moment in remembrance of her godmother Dolly Parton, recalling that the only time she had seen her perform was at the Bowl some years back. \u201cLike so many things Dolly did that I didn\u2019t understand at the time, sitting here with you all right now, feeling her all around me, knowing that she\u2019s right here beside me every day, all the time, more than she could be when she was here, I feel her more than ever,\u201d she said, choking back tears as she led into a cover of \u201cJolene.\u201d \u201cAnd knowing that I get to share this story with you all, it makes that night very worth it. This memory is gold to me. Me and Dolly, we are eternal. Nothing in this life could ever tear us apart. And I\u2019m going to see her again, and I can\u2019t fucking wait because I miss her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s where she felt most at home, belting out those familiar notes of \u201cJolene\u201d as she\u2019s done so many times before. So it was strange that she largely held the mic towards the crowd for her bigger hits, \u201cWe Can\u2019t Stop\u201d and \u201cParty in the U.S.A.,\u201d where Coyne reemerged with a gigantic assortment of balloons that spelled \u201cFuck Yeah Hollywood Bowl.\u201d Cyrus seemed removed from those tracks, aware of the power they held over the attending crowd while recognizing they had become so woven into the cultural fabric that they no longer belonged just to her.<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps that\u2019s why the first of Cyrus\u2019 shows at the Hollywood Bowl felt so possessive, so intrinsically tied to her recent eras and willing to explore them. There were no traditional dance breaks or wild set pieces to accent the songs; here was Cyrus, 33 years old, coming out on the other end of the hit factory with the freedom to be who she\u2019s meant to be. Whether that\u2019s satisfactory is of little significance when, across two sold-out nights, 18,000 fans are still pining to witness it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After she descended from a B-stage in the middle of the stands at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,36575,216],"class_list":["post-885740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-miley-cyrus","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}