If you were a child in the late 2000s, there’s a good chance you watched Miley Cyrus in her breakout role on Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana. She acted in that role for five years and was known to have a much stronger voice than most of her Disney peers (excluding Demi Lovato). But it was sometimes hard to tell over all the electric guitars, synths, bells, and whistles that characterized the show’s music. As she matured on the series, so did the music, culminating in the series’ final number, “I’ll Always Remember You”—an emotional ballad about moving on and growing up. The song is ingrained in every Disney kid’s brain because it marked the end of Cyrus’ childhood and, alongside it, many of their own. Once the show ended, Cyrus set out to prove herself as a bonafide singer with excellent songwriting skills (see: “7 Things”) that would put a spotlight on her stunning vocals in ways Hannah Montana had not.
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In 2010, as she geared up for the final season of Hannah Montana, she released her album “Can’t Be Tamed.” The title track charted high on the Billboard 200, but it wasn’t until December 2012 that Cyrus found the perfect venue to showcase her raw vocal ability: her popular YouTube series, “The Backyard Sessions,” in which Cyrus sings stripped-down covers (and later originals) in a casual outdoor setting. On Christmas Eve that year, she uploaded a cover of her godmother Dolly Parton’s seminal 1974 country banger, “Jolene.” It was one of the first times that Cyrus’ signature country twang, which lent itself well to the heartbreaking song, was on full display. The video went viral on the basis of Cyrus’ unadorned vocals, and the cover has raked up over 388 million views since it was released 11 years ago. Every subsequent release since has not received fewer than a million views, many of them in the tens of millions.
Cyrus has since revived the popular web series: most recently, today, returning to her former TV home Disney (in this case Disney+) for a 42-minute performance special featuring songs off her new album, Endless Summer Vacation, and before that to promote her 2020 album Plastic Hearts.
With the release of the performance series on the streaming platform, let’s look back at Cyrus’ most memorable performances from “The Backyard Sessions” on YouTube.
5. MTV Unplugged Presents “Gimme More” (Britney Spears cover), 2020
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