Miley Cyrus played her first major show in years Friday night at the Hollywood Bowl, the first of two sold-out nights of 'Bass Persuades,' with night two tonight, according to Variety. She walked 200 feet from a pop-up stage in the middle of the crowd back to the main stage, then sat hunched over and told the room 'it is a lot for me.'
The comeback is a manufactured product. All you need is a woman who hasn't toured since 2013, two LA nights, and one phrase — 'first major show in years' — and the machine hands you a headline that writes itself. The gap wasn't absence. It was inventory. The reluctant diva was counting down.
The most quotable moment of the night wasn't a performance. It was a walk. A megastar comes back 200 feet from a stage in the middle of the audience, slumps down, and apologizes for being tired, and every entertainment section has a story about her before the encore. Exhaustion as set dressing — the only press conference she has to give is a slump.
Then she held the mic toward the crowd for the big ones. 'We Can't Stop.' 'Party in the U.S.A.' Eighteen thousand people did the singing while she stood at a distance, watching her own catalog turn into weather. The anti-pop star's trick isn't refusing fame. It's making the audience do the labor, then calling the result art.
The best line of the night wasn't from her. It was in Wayne Coyne's balloons: 'Fuck Yeah Hollywood Bowl.' The only thing on that stage that wasn't a press release.
YOUR TURN: Is a two-night LA run a comeback, or just a show that got a long press release?
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