Miley Cyrus Is Bringing People Together.

Miley Cyrus has had a major impact on popular culture and a positive one because of her artistic evolution and willingness to push the boundaries.

In Glastonbury in 2019, Miley hit the stage looking a lot more like a rocker than a pop star. While there, she sang Nothing Else Matters by Metallica ( see first picture on left).

Miley Cyrus does whatever she wants! That is a rare quality in rock stars these days and it is an incredibly rare quality in pop stars these days.

She can’t be adequately described as a pop singer. What other pop singer would Metallica work with? Can you name even one? Metallica played Nothing Else Matters with Miley on lead vocals when they were on the Howard Stern Show.

The cultural impact of that is huge! Think of how many Miley Cyrus fans tuned in because they knew Miley was going to be there and those pop music fans ended up hearing Metallica with Miley singing.

For some, that was the first day they ever got into Metallica.

For some it was the first day they got into rock music. What other pop star is having that effect?

In an age when rock music doesn’t have a viable business model, in an age when we’re still trying to figure out what the new business model could be for rock… so that music isn't just taken for granted as a quasi-commodity (since actual commodities can be sold), rock music needs all the help it can get.

It needs that help so that there’s eventually going to actually once again be enough financial incentive in it for truly exceptionally creative, bright young people to decide: "Yeah, I want to dedicate my life to a career in rock music"!

As things stands now, the best, the brightest and the most creative of the younger generation are not going to dedicate their lives to a career as a rock music artist, because they know that even if they make an incredible album, if people want it, they'll steal it with no consequences. They have so many options in lucrative and exciting fields, to choose a career in an industry where they can't sell the product of their labor, they'd have to be certifiable!

Of course, there's a fine line between genius and insanity, so ya never know.

Our legal system really doesn't care about rock music. If they did. they would have made the MP3 illegal. Bottom line. It's not as if it was some new advance in the quality of the listening experience. An MP3 isn't even hi-fi....but it was needed to pillage the music industry. Without the MP3, Napster wouldn't have worked. Our legislative system new that the MP3 was necessary for the ruination of the rock music industry and they did nothing to make the MP3 illegal. Meanwhile our judicial system turned a blind eye to the whole mess.

Unauthorized distribution of a copyrighted work is a felony. Not a misdemeanor. A felony. Being convicted of a misdemeanor results in under a year or less, usually much less, of jail time. Being convicted of a felony results in over a year in prison.

Illegal uploading and downloading ran rampant with the advent of the MP3, yet how many people have you heard about who served prison sentences for uploading someone else's copyrighted song to the internet in a place where unlimited numbers of people could illegally download it?

Illegal downloading destroyed the music industry. It is no more complicated than that. Established stars could still tour and make money from that, but even they couldn't make any substantial money from making a new album. Now you know why established bands tour and tour and tour and maybe record an album once or twice a decade.

When the business was at its most competitive, a band would record an album and then tour. The next year, they'd record another album and launch another tour. When did they have time to write songs? On the road.

It was a brutal schedule. Eventually the business model changed to where a band would record an album and then tour and allow two years for the whole process rather than just one year. After all, you don't want to work your musicians so hard that they're taking something to wake up in the morning, taking something else for the pain they're in and something else to be able to get to sleep at night. The there were the substances they used just to alleviate the boredom of continual travel.

If the rock bands were going to live long enough for the record labels to recoup the investments they'd made in them, using the two year cycle made a lot more sense!

Who, at the arena level, makes an album every two years now?

What business would you expect to thrive if it's product can be stolen with impunity? Can you imagine going to a grocery store and filling your cart up with all the food you wanted and then walked out without paying? How would the farmers get paid? How would the butchers and bakers get paid? How would the truckers who deliver the food to the store get paid?

They couldn't get paid. The store would have next to no income if paying for your food was optional. Yet that describes the music industry. Paying to listen to all the music you want is optional.

I'll say it very plainly: A business model where payment for your product is optional is not viable.

Musicians have become so desperate as a result of not being able to sell the product of their labor that since they can't sell the art they create, they resort to measures like Patreon. They're scrounging around for a few fans who are so lonely, they'll pay to become Patreon members so they can form parasocial relationships with the "new stars."

It's become that pathetic. Musicians will sell anything a very small, very lonely, very needy and fervent fanbase anything they can. "Hey, I've just put one of my broken guitar strings on Ebay. You wanna bid for it? It's not just any broken guitar string. It's the string that was on my guitar when I played the solo to my most recent single"!

What thriving industries can you name that do things that way? Rock concert ticket prices are at an all time high and they can be because the fans know they are paying for a very special opportunity: To see the last of the rock stars before they become extinct. The fans are paying the big bucks to see the last of a dying breed.

Make no mistake, stardom in rock music was always a long-shot, but that shot was there! When I was growing up there were new stars coming along on a regular basis. When I say "stars" I don't mean people in bands who appealed to a little niche audience in a sub-genre of a sub-genre of a sub-genre. I'm talking about household names.

What Miley has done for rock music, exposing that huge, young fanbase of hers to some of the greatest rock classics, from bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac and The Doors…that is awesome!

At the same time that Miley is getting pop fans into rock, she’s getting rock fans to check out pop music. I know. I’m one of them!

I used to not listen to pop music at all. Now I do listen to some of it.

I remember being on social media when somebody mentioned that one of the members of The Smiths had died. Well, I had never heard them when I was growing up because the radio stations in the biggest cities where I lived didn’t play The Smiths. Tampa didn’t play them. Washington D.C, didn’t. Baltimore didn’t.

So, I asked the person who posted it what type of radio station would have played them. Then I went and looked them up on Youtube and since I hadn’t gotten a reply yet, I wrote, “Oh, they’re pop.”

Someone wrote back: “With all due respect…

Hold on. That never ends up being respectful. If they were being respectful they wouldn’t feel the need to preface it with that.

“With all due respect, The Smiths were so much more than just a pop band.”

“…just a pop band.”

“So much more than just pop.”

That’s not respectful at all. If your band plays pop or if you’re a pop singer, it means you’re inferior to a band like the almighty Smiths who are so much more!

The woman who wrote that, I don’t even remember her name. I’d never come across her name before, but I didn’t like the cut of her jib. It was so condescending to anyone who likes pop…I wrote back:

"Well, we can’t all develop such superior musical taste like you have."

I was defending pop music and pop music fans.

Miley Cyrus is bringing people together.

I’m a heavy metal guitarist and I was defending pop music because someone had made it sound like pop is so inferior to their kind of music.

Well, I don’t think so. You could make a pretty good case for The Beatles being a pop band when they began. Even in their later days, think of their song The Long And Winding Road.

It doesn’t exactly rock out! It doesn’t have any rock and roll guitar in it. The vocals are mellow. It would have been very much at home on a 70s pop album.

You could make a pretty good case for Elton John being a pop musician.

Pop does not mean bad music. Pop is short for popular.

That’s all it is. Popular music. It’s music that so many people like, it is considered “pop.”

I’m not a big fan of labels and sub-genres and sub-sub-genres. They tend to pigeonhole artists, putting creative limitations on them. So, like many musicians, I divide music into two categories: good music and bad music.

Miley Cyrus sings good music and in the process, she’s uniting people. Pop fans and rock fans are finding out they’ve got more similarities than differences. That's a very good thing. It's a very human thing.

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