When Miley Cyrus famously twerked her way into America’s living rooms, she certainly got into America’s collective head, if not their hearts. In the weeks after her VMA performance it seemed that America could not stop talking about or debating the meaning of Miley. Was this the real Miley, or just an act to break out the Hannah Montana mold? Was she a marketing genius, or all that is wrong with our modern publicity machine? Regardless of what side of the debate you came in on, the one undeniable outcome was that it got people talking…. a lot. The discussion continued with the release of her Bangerz album and the accompanying number one position on the Billboard hot 100. Demand for Miley Cyrus tickets for her Bangerz tour, however, have softened after that peak in popularity, resulting in lots of empty seats and dropping prices in the secondary market.
According to Google searches for ‘Miley Cyrus’ peaked the week of August 25th, immediately after her appearance on the VMAs. Riding the wave of popular chatter and news cycle ubiquity, prices for the Bangerz tour were set aggressively high for a singer with a catalog of hits that you could count on one hand. By the time tickets actually went on sale for her 38-city Bangerz tour, ‘Miley Cyrus’ searches has dropped by 80%, to the same level it had been at over a year ago. Based on TiqIQ’s data, the average secondary market price for Miley’s Bangerz tour is now $182, which is down from over $225 just two months ago.
This decline in prices is in stark contrast to another popular culture phenomena, One Direction. One Direction tickets have been hot from the minute they went on sale, and far from empty seats and prices below face value, tickets for the tour this summer are well above face price. Since the original on sale, nine shows have been added, a move that will send One Direction further up the list of all-time list of top grossing tours. While One Direction has been doing their best to cross over from boy band to legitimate artists, Miley seems focused more on how she can shock than her progression as an artist. Whether she’s twerking with a monkey on her back, smoking pot publicly or posing nude, she continues to generate notoriety from things other than the one thing that will sell tickets: her music. While some argue that all publicity is good publicity, when moms are refusing to take their kids to the shows and flooding her tour promoters with requests to shut down the tour, things may have gone too far. On top of that, reviews of the tour so far have been mixed, commenting more on the spectacle than the talent.
One review summed it up as follows:
“In spite of all the shock-and-horror (not) of seeing Miley ride an oversized hot dog while clad in a feathery mustard yellow costume, Cyrus’ Disney roots are still showing. The spectacle of the Bangerz tour is essentially a bad trip version of the Disney experience, a seedy underbelly vision of what Disney really sells children.”
Despite other negative reviews, Rolling Stone was more complementary, saying:
“Miley’s music was front and center for much of the night, and from beginning to end – roughly 100 minutes long – she nailed her vocals throughout the entertaining evening.”
Given the ascendancy of Country music across all of America, perhaps Miley, with her country roots, is missing an opportunity to get to the top with a bit of dignity in tact. If an alternate universe, Miley Cyrus hasn’t cut her hair, doesn’t twerk and is riding a wave of popularity as Country music’s pop ambassador instead of a 15-foot hot dog. Even without her, Country music is selling out arenas that Miley isn’t within licking distance of. Luke Bryan’s first headline concert at Madison Square Garden sold out in five minutes and Jason Aldean tickets in cities like Pittsburgh,Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia are going for average prices of over $250. Live Nation even launched Country Megaticket this summer which is a ticket package that includes tickets to six country music shows, all for one price. The Megaticket includes shows for Aldean, Bryan as as well as Blake Shelton and Lady Antebellum tickets. Luke Bryan tickets for his next show at MSG in September have a current average price for $421, which is over twice the price of Miley’s tour. The closest Cyrus will get to the Worlds Most Famous Arena is the decidedly second-tier Nassau Coliseum, where her average price is considerably less than Bryan’s MSG show.
In addition to the mimicking oral sex on a man in a Bill Clinton mask and lighting life-sized joints, one of the moments from the tour that almost all reviews mentioned was her cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’. It’s the one song where reviewers consistently cite her vocal talents. Just over a year ago, Cyrus posted a You Tube video of a Jolene cover from her ‘backyard sessions’. The video now has 26 million views and the Miley Cyrus in it seems wholly different than the one currently on tour. The backyard sessions videos, set in a rustic backyard, feature a long-haired Miley on the microphone accompanied by a stand-up bass, keyboard, two guitars and drummer. It’s simple, clean and hard to ignore the magnificence of her voice as well as her link to a country great of past. If she were to ever put her tongue away, focus on the music and exploit her country connection, it’s unlikely that she’d have any problems filling stadiums or have prices on the secondary market anywhere close to face price.
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