‘Bangerz’ at 10: Miley Cyrus Beyond ‘We Can’t Stop’ and ‘Wrecking Ball’

By Larisha Paul

Ten years ago, Miley Cyrus the artist was largely overshadowed by Miley Cyrus the post-Disney wild child. At 20 years old, she was a specimen unleashed on the world to be examined under various microscopes, with more scrutiny than ever. She summed up her newfound freedom in the opening shot of the "We Can't Stop" video, where she uses comically large scissors to remove an ankle monitor. Released June 3, 2013, the song introduced Cyrus’ fourth studio album, Bangerz — but the music, it seemed, was overshadowed by Cyrus showing off shining grills in her mouth and carefully positioned Black people, particularly women, as accessories to her twerk-fueled rebellion. "It's our party, we can do what we want to," she snapped on the single, a preemptive defense to the brewing judgment. "It's my mouth, I can say what I want to."

She was right, but wholly unprepared for the avalanche of public opinion that fell on the Bangerz era. The drinks and the drugs would flow through her never-ending party, where everything she did and everything she said would become the law of her reckless land. But her actions would largely drown out her words. "The music was driving it, but all those things from that era, especially with Bangerz, the pop-culture moments almost eclipse the music itself," Cyrus told Rolling Stone in 2020. "I felt that I almost took some blame for the distraction sometimes."

The Bangerz era produced one of the last great flashbulb-memory live performances, when Cyrus took the VMAs stage in August 2013. That night, dressed as a teddy bear, she emerged from a giant teddy bear to join the smaller, twerking teddy bears also onstage. She then proceeded to deliver an uncharacteristically forgettable vocal performance, but a notoriously unforgettable visual one. "We Can't Stop" was all crotch-grabbing and ass-shaking, which naturally carried over into a medley with "Blurred Lines" and the added chaos of Public Enemy Number 95: Robin Thicke. (Diane Martell directed the music videos for both songs — she had a busy year). The performance highlights, like Cyrus stripping down to a nude latex bikini set and humping a foam finger, resulted in more than 160 FCC complaints and memes of stunned audience members Rihanna and One Direction.

"I was creating attention for myself because I was dividing myself from a character I had played," Cyrus recently recalled to British Vogue. "Anyone, when you’re 20 or 21, you have more to prove." At the time, she didn't understand what the big deal was, which is like running around with a blowtorch and being surprised something catches fire. But when she tried to shift the focus — "Wrecking Ball" had dropped the day of the VMAs, with its music video arriving two weeks later — she soon realized that while she had garnered that attention, she had also lost the power to control the narrative she was trying to rewrite.

Don't get her wrong: Cyrus loved her iconic pop-culture moments. It's just that she thought she could have the best of both worlds, but ultimately found herself wondering, "Did anyone even hear my song?" For a moment, with "Wrecking Ball," she found the perfect middle ground. It became her first (and only, until "Flowers" this year) Number One on the Billboard Hot 100, ascending from its No. 50 debut in only three weeks. And its video racked up 19.3 million views in the first 24 hours of its release, breaking the same Vevo record that "We Can't Stop" did.

Before she released the video, Cyrus told Rolling Stone she expected people to be shocked when they saw it, but in a good way — surprised to see her demanding she be taken seriously as an artist. And people were shocked, just not in that sense. The tears falling from her eyes and her soul-stirring, guttural vocal performance became secondary to her swinging around an indoor demolition site wearing nothing but burgundy Dr. Martens. "When you think of ‘Wrecking Ball,’ you don't think of the pain. You don't think of me looking directly into the camera, breaking the wall, crying, reaching out," Cyrus told Rolling Stone in 2020. "You remember me getting naked, and I don't know whose fault that is."

The third single from Bangerz, the lovestruck ballad "Adore You," was a palette cleanser devoid of the extra antics. Its video was more sensual than anything Cyrus had released, but the bar for outrage had already been set too high. Cyrus’ appropriation of Black culture was criticized both in the media and within her own fan base — and the conversation was revived again when she distanced herself from that same culture four years later. She was intensely body-shamed during the VMAs backlash. And she, along with fellow maturing child stars Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato, had brought a remarkable reign of Disney royalty to an epic end.

Bangerz did have more to offer, but nothing brash enough to drown out the noise around it. Cyrus keeps the party going long after it needed to end on "Do My Thang," which comes across as a flimsy companion piece to "23," the Mike WiLL Made-It single she famously guested on earlier that year. Despite that stumble, the EDM-charged deep cut "Love Money Party," with an assist from Big Sean, gets it right. "Money get low and the DJ stop/And the music slow down and that shit get blurry," she slurs, considering what happens when the party on "We Can't Stop" eventually, well, stops.

There are five other collaborations on Bangerz, including a wasted Britney Spears cameo on "SMS (Bangerz)" and uneven features from French Montana and Ludacris on "FU" and "Hands in the Air," respectively. But when Cyrus isn't trying so hard to fit in and validate her borrowed aesthetic, the kinks iron themselves out. Her country-rap tango with Nelly on "4×4" is as ridiculous and fun as "Hoedown Throwdown" was in Hannah Montana: The Movie. And there's no reason why Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" being flipped into a trap-infused duet with Future should have ever worked, but on "My Darlin" it does.

As we’ve come to know, there's nothing Cyrus can't sing. The production surrounding her voice is often secondary to her emotive power. On "Someone Else," over another skittering Mike WiLL Made-It beat, her signature rasp cuts through. "If you’re looking for love, know that love don't live here anymore," she sings. "He left with my heart/They both walked through that door without me." She offers another perspective on love and loss on the anguished ballad "Drive." They both carry the same musical DNA that later molded "Angels Like You" on Plastic Hearts (2020) and "Jaded" on Endless Summer Vacation (2023) — even "Wrecking Ball" on Bangerz. The only difference is now people are really listening instead of just watching.

Bangerz hasn't received any version of a TikTok-driven resurgence, or any calls for its reevaluation a decade on from its release. At 30 years old, Cyrus is fully shedding the weight of that era. "I carried some guilt and shame around myself for years because of how much controversy and upset I really caused," she told British Vogue. "Now that I’m an adult, I realize how harshly I was judged." Now, she's hit her stride and it's all about new beginnings. "Flowers," the first single from Endless Summer Vacation, is her biggest hit since "Wrecking Ball" and didn't need anything beyond a masterful use of the standard pop template to make it happen.

When Cyrus released "Flowers," rumors spread that its music video had been shot in the home Cyrus shared with ex-husband Liam Hemsworth (it was actually filmed in Frank Sinatra's old Hollywood mansion). Others claimed one of the outfits she wore in it was a nod to the suit Hemsworth wore when telling her to "behave" on a red carpet. The singer never fed into the narrative herself by confirming or denying any of the claims, and it was ultimately buried beneath the weight of the song's success. She’d been trying to reach this moment for the better part of the past decade. "I think that I’m really embracing — and everyone else is embracing, too — that the music is a priority right now," she told Rolling Stone in 2020. "I guess I’m just in love with the fact that for once it feels like it's really focused on the music."