Miley Cyrus Answers Hollywood Bowl Critics From the Stage: “I Am Fully Present”

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Miley Cyrus used her second Hollywood Bowl show to answer the online chatter about her first. Her comments appeared to respond to videos claiming she wasn’t fully present on Friday night (Oct. 16) and didn’t sing all the words of her first full concert in four years, Billboard reports, though she never named a specific complaint. On Sunday (Oct. 18), she took it on directly.

“I’ve never heard that I don’t put my heart into something,” she told the crowd, in a video The Hollywood Reporter posted on X. Then she pointed at the source:

I don’t know if any of you heard that. That somebody was doing commentary to get clickbait on their video talking about my show on Friday night, but I’m a lot of things, yeah, and we’re not even going to entertain that.

Miley Cyrus, at the Hollywood Bowl on Oct. 18, Billboard

The rest of the speech was less defensive and more raw. Before walking out to open the night with “Orbit,” a ballad from Bass Persuades, she said she had convinced herself the show wasn’t going to happen. “I was gonna run away, but never would I leave you all sitting in these seats unfulfilled from a show,” she said, and the crowd answered with chants of “Miley! Miley! Miley!” She was frank about the toll, too. “It is hard for me to stand up here and do this show,” she said. “It does not come as natural as it once did to me before.” She told fans they were “more to me than an experiment.”

I can take a lot, but one thing I will not stand is any question about where my heart is when I’m on the stage. Not one. I am fully present.

Miley Cyrus, at the Hollywood Bowl on Oct. 18, Billboard

She also worked the criticism into the set. While performing “Bass Persuades,” Rolling Stone reports, she joked that she had forgotten she was supposed to sing every word. Watch the official video for the song below.

Friday’s opener mixed songs from the new album with a tribute to Dolly Parton. Billboard says she paid tribute to her late godmother, Dolly Parton, and explained that one of the biggest reasons she wanted to play the Bowl was that it was the only place she saw Parton perform live. “Me and Dolly are eternal,” she said. Model/Actriz, her opening act and a collaborator, made a cameo, as did the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, who played “Do You Realize??” and “Karen Don’t Be Sad,” the latter from the two acts’ 2015 project Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.

Read moreMiley Cyrus Is Now Just Miley, With a New Album and Two Hollywood Bowl Nights

The two nights are the only live events she has planned for Bass Persuades, her first album as simply Miley, which came out in September. Rolling Stone says she has no further tour dates scheduled.

Her closing message on Sunday was simple. “The only thing that I have is this moment with all of you,” she said. “And so to make it clear, I’m here with you right now.”