Stop Trying To Make Miley Cyrus The “White Nicki Minaj”, Okay?

Over the weekend, pop superstar Miley Cyrus — who’s currently promoting her upcoming album and new single ‘We Can’t Stop’ — hung out with the people at Billboard magazine for an interesting cover shoot and interview. Because she’s just 20 years old, Miley said a bunch of stuff that’s got people everywhere sadly shaking their heads. Let’s laugh together, shall we?

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1. She’s not the white Nicki Minaj.

“A lot of people wanted to try to make me the white Nicki Minaj. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I love ‘hood’ music, but my talent is as a singer.”

It’s possible that Miley meant this as a simple statement of record biz defiancy, kinda like that time a few years ago when she dressed up as a bird and told the world she “can’t be tamed” (whatever that means). Needless to say, some people (including Huffington Post‘s Kia Marakechi) took offence at her subtle dismissals of Nicki Minaj and urban music, especially considering that her new album features rapper Future, production from hip-hop star Mike Will Made It (“a healthy amount of undeniably urban music”, as Marakechi puts it) and, you know, she’s made these kinda moves a major part of her repertoire lately:

There’s a useful lesson in here for Miley, like maybe don’t write-off an entire genre and its biggest star while you’re still riding its bandwagon?

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2. She’s not fat or anorexic.

“Look, I’m not fat or anorexic – I just know my angles.”

To put this in context, this was just a weird aside the interviewer captured of Miley chatting to the photographer during the cover shoot. It’s always sad to hear young starlets talking about their bodies in such terms, but if Miley really knew her angles, she would’ve used the words ‘acute’ and ‘obtuse’.

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3. She’s a ‘count-step’ pioneer. (‘Count-step’ is something nobody wants.)

“I’ve always wanted country-rock influences, but now I’m moving over to a more urban side. It’s not a hip-hop album, though – it’s a pop album. I’m not coming in trying to rap. It’s more like, ‘I don’t see any girls out there doing what Miguel and Frank Ocean are doing. We’ve been calling it ‘count-step,’ because it’s like country, dubstep and a little trap… If you could put Dolly Parton, some Adele and Juicy J together, you’d have that weird balance.”

I think by ‘that weird balance’, she means ‘Oh my God, this sounds f**king terrible, turn it off.”

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4. She’s not 17 anymore 

“Right now, when people go to iTunes and listen to my old music, it’s so irritating to me because I can’t just erase that stuff and start over. My last record [2009’s EDM-inflected Can’t Be Tamed] I feel so disconnected from – I was 16 or 17 when I made it. When you’re in your 20s, you just don’t really know that person anymore. I want to start as a new artist. I consider my upcoming album my first, really.”

This sounds almost exactly like something she said about her last album a few years ago: “Tamed is kinda like breaking out of someone that feels like they’re kinda stuck in the same ol’, same ol’, and not just wanting to be like everybody else.”

In summary: STOP LYING, LIAR!

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5. That song about dancing like a stripper is not for you, critics/Dad

“I didn’t make this song for the critics, but for the people living it,” she says, dragging on a cigarette between shoots atop the photo studio’s roof, where she’s stripped down to a leather bustier to soak in the rays. “I’m 20 years old and I want to talk to the people that are up all night with their friends. It’s based on a true story of a crazy night I had: When I heard the song for the first time, it captured exactly what I was living.”

Hmm, crazy night. Kinda like this? Seems fun.

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6. Aargh, puns!

“I hate it when people make puns out of my song titles. Should I do a Christian Bale and start freaking out?”

This brave statement pits Miley directly against legendary British director, Alfred Hitchcock, who once called puns “the highest form of literature”. Here’s a pun, Miley: please stop.

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