“God, can we hurry up and cancel Miley Cyrus again?”

I hate Miley Cyrus’ schtick.

Columbia Records i presume

It is hard to argue that we need to be less forgiving amidst our current social ferment, when victims of cancellation—both Hard and Soft—are rotting in mass graves. Historically the American pop-culture apparatus has been threaded with big, treacly Second Chances; a cliché that could either ring horrifically problematic, (I do recommend Googling the Kobe Bryant police interview,) or a welcome recorrection of a ridiculously overheated storyline, (I was supposed to assume that Tiger Woods wasn't cheating on his wife?) So, generally speaking, I'm of the belief that the foreclosure of that flavor of redemptive arc has been a net good for civilization, so long as nobody—nobody—is left off the hook. With that in mind, let me make my case: Please, for the love of God, can we hurry up and cancel Miley Cyrus again? It simply can't go on like this.

You and I were both conscious beings for the last 12 years. Everything I outline below occurred in our living memory. I, like you, remember Miley's rhapsodically atrocious hip-hop turn—which carried the distinct tang of a Jenna Maroney 30 Rock cutaway gag. The first line Miley raps on one of the choice artifacts from that era, titled 23 (do you get it?) goes: "I'm in the club, high off purp, with some shades on," which is the exact sort of swagless simulacrum that I imagine ChatGPT was trained on. 23 made it to #11 on the Hot 100, which in retrospect was the original harbinger of pop music's drain-circling decline into an extremely bad-feeling wasteland, which likely reached a final, revolution-sparking nadir with the god-awful "Texas Hold 'Em" song that had everyone biting their tongue and anxiously looking around the room. 

You may also remember that Cyrus' brief fixation on rap music sparked a legitimate blogging delirium back when digital media existed. Critics, understandably, were outraged that this woman, who is and always will be the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, had accessorized a handful of tired hip-hop precepts to further a deeply cynical brand pivot—without mustering the common decency to write bars that didn't suck shit. (This also led to one of the very few times in the public record where Nicki Minaj was spectacularly In The Right, when she ripped Miley a new one at the VMAs.) Miley never apologized, or really acknowledged, what was obvious to everyone—that she was nakedly counterfeit and in way over her head while buoyed by a distinct flavor of woe-is-me defensiveness often found in the psyche of besieged nepo children. Instead, she did the opposite. Here's our girl in 2017, explaining why—suddenly—she wasn't making rap music anymore. "It was too much ‘Lamborghini, got my Rolex, got a girl on my cock.'” Smoking purp, in the club, with your shades on, meanwhile, is totally above board.

And you probably also remember that Miley has since spent the last five years pandering to the one audience that is even less discerning than the average middle-school hypebeast. Beginning in 2019, Cyrus started releasing these covers of fat-part-of-the-bell-curve classic rock standards, like Blondie and Fleetwood Mac, that went absolutely nuclear on the swing-state boomer internet—therein carefully divesting herself off all of those Air Force Ones with the raw power of Facebook shares from HVAC guys and PTA moms in downstate Illinois. When I was home for Christmas that year and my mother giddily threw one Cyrus' completely unexceptional version of "Heart of Glass" I knew we were fucked. Miley won. She successfully engineered a totally unearned redemption arc while always, and only ever, producing garbage. "Flowers" is Adult Contemporary for washed millennials, and we gave her a Grammy for it! A sick sad country.

I get that Miley's persistent unkillability is not the result of a secretive pop-industry conspiracy, and most of her foibles can be explained by the fact that she seems kind of oblivious. But the mediocrity is going to continue until someone steps in. We have reams of cancellable material that can be deployed to permanently alter society for the better. Pull the lever, Kronk! Get rid of her! Let's live in a world where good things are popular! —Dickie Minaj