Miley Cyrus: Disney Darling Turned Pop Provocateur
Miley started out playing Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel—a good girl image she would later shatter by riding naked on a wrecking ball. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
As Hannah Montana, Miley released several successful albums, starting with Hannah Montana (2006), Hannah Montana 2 (2007), and Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009).
These first three albums all reached #1 and sold more than 10 million copies combined.
In the show, she plays a character named Miley Cyrus who has an alter ego: the pop star Hannah Montana. Her actual name is Destiny Hope, but she stuck with Miley as that’s what everyone knew her as.
Her first album not associated with Montana was Breakout (2008). It didn’t do as well as her Disney releases—selling 2 million copies—but it helped spread her “real” name beyond U.S. borders.
Next came the EP The Time of Our Lives (2009), which sold 3 million in the U.S. and continued her international breakthrough.
The lead single Party in the U.S.A. presented a less innocent version of Miley—though still not quite swinging from wrecking balls.
Her next album, Can’t Be Tamed (2010), saw the “bad girl” image taking hold, but it failed to make a major impact, with only 500,000 copies sold in the U.S.
After a brief hiatus—possibly due to a label change to RCA—she returned in 2013 with Bangerz, which sold 3 million in the U.S. and marked a dramatic shift in image.
Wrecking Ball, the standout single, became an international smash hit, selling 9 million copies in the U.S. and over 1 million in the U.K., propelling Miley to global fame.
From Dead Petz to Flowers: Miley’s Ever-Changing Sound
Her next release was a curveball. Back in 2015, releasing an album for free was highly unusual, but that’s exactly what she did. Without a label, she dropped Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, a collaboration with The Flaming Lips. Let’s just say—it was different. Critics appreciated the bold move.
Next came another U-turn with Younger Now (2017), a country-pop album that featured her godmother, Dolly Parton. The genre shift echoed her father Billy Ray’s roots, but commercial success didn’t follow—only half a million copies were sold. Miley soon announced she wouldn’t tour the album and would instead focus on her role as a judge on The Voice.
During this time, she featured on Mark Ronson’s Nothing Breaks Like a Heart, which reached #2 in the U.K. charts and helped keep her in the spotlight.
This was followed by her least successful release, the 2019 EP She Is Coming, which also featured Ronson but failed to make an impact.
On her 2020 album Plastic Hearts, she returned with more purpose, teaming up with Ronson again alongside guest appearances from Dua Lipa, Joan Jett, Stevie Nicks, and Billy Idol. Now judged more by streaming than sales, this became the most-streamed album of the decade, with over 3 billion plays.
After a live album, Miley returned in 2023 with Endless Summer Vacation. On it was Flowers, her most-streamed single to date.
In the streaming era, chart positions are increasingly translated into gold, platinum, and diamond certifications—and Flowers has gone multi-platinum around the world. It reached #1 in over 40 countries and became her biggest song on Spotify in under a year.
Miley Cyrus Tunes | Related Pages
Flowers | Chords + TAB
You can learn how to play Flowers by Miley Cyrus using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recording.
| Am7 | Dm7 |
We were good, we were gold…
Check out the full TAB lesson here: Flowers (Miley Cyrus) Guitar Lesson with TAB.
Miley Cyrus on the web
