Miley Cyrus played two sold-out shows at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on Friday and Sunday. They were her first full concerts in about four years. She hasn't done a full tour since 2014. An estimated 1.5 million people tried to get tickets. The shows promoted her new album, Bass Persuades. It debuted at No. 1 in September and fell to No. 157 in its second week. After Friday's show, some fans on X complained that she didn't sing every word of her songs. On Sunday, she answered them from the stage. "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," she said. "I am fully present."

She Let the Crowd Sing Her Biggest Hits

Some fans and critics say she ducked the songs people paid to hear.

She dodged the big chorus on "Wrecking Ball." Los Angeles Times pop music critic Mikael Wood called the song one of the great power ballads of the last 25 years. He wrote that she "inexplicably dodged it, skipping the song's first chorus and soft-pedaling the second — an anticlimax for the ages." He also wrote that she let the audience and her backup singers handle vocals on "The Climb," "Party in the U.S.A." and "We Can't Stop." He asked whether "grand" was even the right word "for a comeback as equivocal as this one."

Even a friendlier critic noticed she held back. Rolling Stone's Althea Legaspi mostly liked the show. But she wrote that "where things seemed a bit disconnected was during some of her most standout songs." Legaspi wrote that on "We Can't Stop," "Wrecking Ball" and "Party in the U.S.A.," Cyrus "left the audience to sing through the choruses."

Fans online felt shortchanged. After Friday, fans on X complained about her effort, Paste reported. Billboard reported that videos online claimed she wasn't fully present and didn't sing all the words.

But She's Doing This on Her Own Terms Now

Cyrus and her defenders say the show was honest about what performing costs her.

Performing is hard for her now. "It is hard for me to stand up here and do this show," Cyrus told Sunday's crowd. "It does not come as natural as it once did." She said she almost didn't go on before the opening song. "I was gonna run away," she said. "But never would I leave you all sitting in these seats unfulfilled from the show." The crowd chanted her name, Billboard reported.

She says the show was for her, too. "This is not an experiment of you," she said. "This is an experience for me. And you all make the experience possible." On Friday she'd told the crowd that "performance can't be everything." On Sunday, during the song "Bass Persuades," she joked about the critics: "Oh, I forgot, I'm supposed to sing every f---ing line."

Parts of the show won a critic over. Legaspi wrote that "most of those firsts worked in her favor" and that the good stretches were "a joyride." Legaspi called the night a show where Cyrus is "doing and being who and what she wants, on her own terms."

And the Bigger Problem Is the New Music

Wood says she wants to sing songs her fans don't want to hear.

Fans aren't buying the new album. Bass Persuades fell from No. 1 to No. 157 in its second week. Stereogum's Tom Breihan pointed out that it's "a relatively experimental record" with no big hit single. "Maybe bass simply does not persuade," he wrote. Paste's Laura Molloy wrote that her push to "make the kids dance again" was "ultimately fruitless."

She sang hardest on the songs fans want least. Wood wrote that she sang "more heartily" on the new songs. He called the album "one of the year's least likable pop records." "She wants to do the thing that nobody wants her to do," he wrote, "and doesn't want to do the thing that everybody wants her to do."

Where This Lands

Wood, Legaspi and fans on X say Cyrus handed her biggest choruses to the crowd. Cyrus says it's hard for her to perform now. She says nobody should question where her heart is onstage. Legaspi still called the best stretches "a joyride." She wrote that Cyrus was doing things "on her own terms." Wood says the deeper problem is her new album. It fell from No. 1 to No. 157 in a week. Rolling Stone reported that she has no more tour dates scheduled.

Sources