She’s Still in There

Miley Cyrus spent years building the most aggressively unhinged public image in pop—pissing on sidewalks, full nudity in magazine spreads, letting her tits loose on live MTV—and then, somewhere around 2017, decided to put it all away. Softer hair, an engagement, a single called Malibu that sounded like a different person entirely. The feral era, apparently, was over.

And then Coachella happened.

She’s in front of the Hollyweed sign—the Hollywood Hills letters briefly defaced to read HOLLYWEED, one of the better pieces of ambient vandalism in recent years—drinking a green smoothie and letting her underboob hang out with the relaxed confidence of someone who simply doesn’t consider it a big deal. Which it isn’t. But it is very much Miley.

I’ll admit it: I miss the feral version. The woman who seemed to be daring everyone to keep up, who made the VMAs genuinely uncomfortable, who looked like she was having the time of her life and didn’t give a shit whether you approved. The current version isn’t bad—she can actually sing, which the chaos years sometimes obscured. But there was something electric about that period, the sense that anything could happen at any given appearance.

The underboob at Coachella isn’t chaos. It’s a reminder. Whatever she’s packaging herself as now, the original Miley is still in there somewhere, occasionally slipping out between sips.