Miley Takes Bass Persuades To The Hollywood Bowl With Wayne Coyne, Model/Actriz, And A Message To The Haters

Miley Cyrus, who now performs as just plain Miley, hasn't toured in a long time. She did a bunch of festival headlining dates in 2021 and 2022, but her last proper full-scale headlining tour was way back in 2014. In recent years, she's done a few one-off performances — sometimes singing live on TV, sometimes doing small promotional deals. In interviews, she's said that she has a hard time playing live, and she reportedly turned down an offer to headline Coachella. But when Miley announced her new album Bass Persuades last month, she also two big shows at the Hollywood Bowl. They went down this past weekend, on Friday and Sunday.

The Hollywood Bowl shows were reportedly quite emotional for Miley. She sang many the big hits that you'd expect — "We Can't Stop," "Wrecking Ball," "The Climb," "Party In The USA," "Flowers"— and she also did a bunch of track from Bass Persuades live for the first time. (Bass Persuades recently came out and debuted at #1, then had the steepest second-week drop in Billboard history.) Recent collaborators Model/Actriz opened both shows, and they also joined Miley for the live debut of their song "Different Religion."

Fairly early in the show, Miley told the crowd that one of the reasons she wanted to play the Hollywood Bowl is the time that she got to see her late godmother Dolly Parton perform there. Miley paid tribute to Parton online after her passing a few months ago. At the show, she spoke emotionally about the loss, and she covered Parton's classic "Jolene."

In the middle of the show, the Flaming Lips frontman and longtime Miley collaborator Wayne Coyne joined her on a smaller stage in the middle of the crowd, and they sang the Lips' classic "Do You Realize??" together.

Miley and Coyne also performed "Karen Don't Be Sad," their duet from Miley's 2015 album Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.

During the encores, Miley's fiancé Maxx Morando joined her for the live debut of her song "Let's Get Married."

On Sunday night, Miley took a moment to talk about how she'd seen someone "doing commentary to get clickbait on their video, talking about my show on Friday night." Here's what she had to say about that:

We're not even going to entertain that because you all have been with me long enough to know that anytime I'm doing something meaningful, that's going to be a stepping stone in my life and my career, to propel me forward, not only as an artist but the person that I want to be, you know that it's been controversial. And the controversy, you know, it used to be a lot of fun, and it still can be.

Again, I can be pretty melted. I love that about me. I actually used to live my life pretty hard 'cause life's hard. So I thought I had to get — I had to get hard. Look, the gays are gonna love that one! "Miley got hard!" Miley was born hard, OK? But I didn't enjoy my life as much when I was living hard. I love pouring myself into something, and I'll be honest, what I said — don't miss the words — because it is hard for me to stand up here and do the show. It does not come as natural as it once did before because, like all of us, we change, we evolve, we grow, and we find what's gonna come with us, what continues to fit.

And you all are more, to me, than an experiment. That is absolutely not what this is. This is not an experiment of you. This is an experience for me. And you all make the experience possible. The only way that I get to test my personal boundaries, my limits, what I think I can do — I mean, before I came out for [opening song] "Orbit," I already told myself I wasn't gonna come onstage. I was gonna run away. But never would I leave you all sitting in these seats unfulfilled from the show.

So I can take a lot, but one thing I will not stand is any question about where my heart is when I'm on the stage. No way. I'm fully present. Every bit of our fears, they live in the future, and I have no business even questioning that right now because the only thing that I have is this moment with all of you. And so to make it clear, I am all here with you right now. Nowhere else I wanna be.

During Sunday's show, Miley also joined Model/Actriz onstage during their opening set.