11 facts about Miley Cyrus you might not know
After winning her first Grammy Award in February and surprising fans by releasing new single “Doctor (Work It Out)” soon after, Miley Cyrus is flying high.
Miley’s 2023 single “Flowers”, which spent 10 weeks at number one in the UK last year and also topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, won record of the year at the Grammys last month. Taking to the stage to accept the award, the pop superstar said: “This is amazing but I really hope it doesn’t change anything, because my life was beautiful yesterday.
“Not everyone in the world will get a Grammy but everyone in this world is spectacular, so please don’t think that this is important, even though it’s very important.”
While some of that may not be news to her fans, here are 11 things you might not know about the LGBTQ+ singer.
Miley Cyrus is not her birth name
Miley Cyrus was. actually born Destiny Hope Cyrus, legally changing her name to Miley Ray in 2008.
Speaking on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, her father, “Achy Breaky Heart” country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, said he and his wife gave their daughter the name because “it was her destiny to bring hope to the world”.
However, Miley has revealed she doesn’t like it.
The name Miley comes from her parent’s childhood nickname for her, Smiley, which was later shortened.
Dolly Parton is her godmother
Dolly Parton is Miley’s godmother with the singer and actor describing the country superstar as her “fairy godmother”.
The pair have performed together, and Dolly appeared in three episodes of the Miley’s Disney Channel show Hannah Montana.
She first auditioned for Hannah Montana at a young age
Teen sitcom Hannah Montana, which ran from 2006 to 2011, initially rejected Miley for the main role because she was seen as too young.
She reportedly first auditioned at the age of 11. After persistently sending in audition tapes, she was finally won the part at the age of 13. Billy Ray was subsequently cast as her on-screen father.
Miley identifies as pansexual
In 2015, Miley came out publicly, clarifying that she is pansexual – after people mislabelled her as bisexual when she said she dates all genders. She also identified as gender-fluid.
Telling Paper magazine about when she first came out to her mother, at the age of 14, she said: “I remember telling her I admire women in a different way. And she asked me what that meant. And I said, ‘I love them. I love them like I love boys’.
“I just asked for her to accept me, and she has.”
The singer was born with tachycardia
Miley was born with was born with supraventricular tachycardia, a condition causing an abnormal resting heart rate.
In her autobiography, Miles To Go, she wrote: “[It] isn’t dangerous. It won’t hurt me, but it does bother me. There is never a time on stage when I’m not thinking about my heart.”
Miley hates one of her own songs
Miley has said she hates 2009 hit “Party in the USA”, a track from her debut EP The Time of Our Lives.
Speaking about the song, released to support her clothing line collaboration with the late fashion designer Max Azria, she wrote on her fan blog: “I didn’t write it [and] I didn’t expect it to be popular originally. It was just something that I wanted to do and I needed some songs and it turned out for the best.”
She added that the song is “not even my style of music”.
Miley founded her own LGBTQ+ youth organisation
In 2014, Miley founded the Happy Hippie Foundation, which focuses on LGBTQ+ youth homelessness.
She launched it after trans teen Leelah Alcorn took her own life in 2014.
“I never thought it was right that someone would lose their life over not being able to be free,” Miley said. “It really hurt me to know that she didn’t have anyone she could talk to.”
She has more than 70 tattoos
Miley Cyrus is said to have more than 70 tattoos, including a motorcycle on her arm, script reading “just breathe” on her ribs, and a dream catcher on her torso.
She also has a miniature tattoo of an equals sign on her ring finger, to show her support for same-sex marriage. The singer got the tattoo in 2011, with equal marriage legalised in the US in 2015.
Miley doesn’t want children
The musician has made it clear that she doesn’t want children right now, with climate change a significant factor in her decision.
“We [millennials] don’t want to reproduce because we know that the Earth can’t handle it,” she told Elle in 2019. “We’re getting handed a piece-of-sh*t planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child.
“Until I feel my kid would live on an Earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that.”
‘Wrecking Ball’ is her least favourite song to perform
Miley has previously spoken about disliking performing her hit “Wrecking Ball, saying in an interview that the break-up song “bums me out”.
However, last year, she re-released the track with godmother Dolly, who said she “almost wept in my car” when she first heard it.
The singer used to wear a purity ring
Raised as a Christian, Miley used to wear a “purity ring”, which symbolises that a person won’t have sex until they are married.
She has since spoken about sex as a “beautiful and magical thing”, gently teasing fellow Disney stars The Jonas Brothers about their own rings, joking that it must have “felt so good” to take them off.
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