A caveat:

I am just old enough and just prudish enough to have been repelled by Miley Cyrus’s more outlandish pranks–maybe stuff like that is now in the rearview mirror of her life.

But I am just smart enough, if a little slow, to realize that she has one of the greatest voices of her generation. Her range is incredible (contrast “Zombie” with “Jolene,” both below.)

Beyond that, there’s an intelligence and sense of empathy there. Cyrus understands what she’s singing, whether the deep grief of “Zombie” or, listen as her accent changes, faintly Appalachian, and the timber of her voice rises, sweeter and higher inside her body, in “Jolene.”

I am an older man but it still took me a moment to get past the shortness of her skirt in “Roadhouse Blues”–it was a short moment, too–to understand that she understands the Blues, including Jim Morrison’s song.

She understood, too, how to dial herself down just enough to provide the background, in David Bowie’s “Heroes,” for a moving public service ad aired during the 2021 Super Bowl.

Four memorable and arresting performances

She is phenomenal.