After she descended from a B-stage in the middle of the stands at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday night, Miley Cyrus sat hunched over on the main stage, visibly sapped by the 200-foot trek back to the spotlight. And I appreciate you so much. But it is a lot for me and it is a little bit overwhelming.” It’s an admission that a seasoned pop star — one of our biggest and brightest, mind you — would rarely deign to make at their first major show in years.
And yet, it felt like the thesis for the first of two concerts Cyrus is performing in Los Angeles in support of her latest album “Bass Persuades,” a record with a few bright moments but lacking the singular vision that defined some of her strongest work. Across the nearly two-hour set, Cyrus appeared at odds with the pressures of being a generational talent, proudly chasing her muse with full-throated renditions of fresher, more opaque material while letting the audience carry the vocals on her biggest hits. It was confounding, oftentimes bizarre and, in the end, strangely entertaining, a snapshot of a megastar who, after all this time, is still figuring out what artist she wants to become.
That’s the thrill for anyone who has followed Cyrus’ career since she emerged as a Disney star with “Hannah Montana,” trying on different styles while navigating the mercurial sound of mainstream pop. She’s shape-shifted at a moment’s notice, chasing massive hits with pivots into deeply unconventional genres and sounds, beginning with her reinventive “Bangerz” era in 2013 and its subsequent global trek, her last extensive tour. Since then, she’s remained prolific and expansive, traipsing from psych-pop (“Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz”) to glam rock (“Plastic Hearts”) and, perhaps not accidentally, stumbling into a few massive hits along the way, with songs like “Wrecking Ball” and “Flowers” that she let the audience carry during the Bowl show.
On Friday night, Cyrus hewed closely to her new material with tracks from “Bass Persuades” and a few from 2025’s wildly ambitious “Something Beautiful.” She’s performed so rarely that nearly half the songs on the setlist were live debuts: Over the past few years, Cyrus staged only two fans-only shows in Los Angeles and Paris, appearances that reinforced her strengths as a performer without heeding to the pressures — interviews, TV appearances, radio drops — that come with it. Yet Cyrus was quick to ground the show in her reality, one where she’s learned to balance her public and private lives. All bets were off as she opened with “Orbit,” a very languid ballad about the magnetism of romance.
Already the pace was unpredictable, giving way to the zapping synth-pop of “Different Religion” (with featuring and opening act Model/Actriz) and Fentanyl-rejecting “Bass Persuades.” She let her freak flag fly with Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne on the B stage for the group’s “Do You Realize??” and their collaboration “Karen Don’t Be Sad,” and strutted across the catwalk at the lip of the stage for “Walk of Fame,” one of the more supermodel songs in her discography. Amid her musings on fame, she struck a truly emotive moment in remembrance of her godmother Dolly Parton, recalling that the only time she had seen her perform was at the Bowl some years back. This memory is gold to me.
Me and Dolly, we are eternal. Nothing in this life could ever tear us apart. And I’m going to see her again, and I can’t fucking wait because I miss her.” That’s where she felt most at home, belting out those familiar notes of “Jolene” as she’s done so many times before.
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