Miley Cyrus at Hollywood Bowl: The Artist Helped Us Survive Our Own Reinventions Without Us Even Realising

Miley Cyrus at Hollywood Bowl: Having Miley pay tribute to her godmother, Dolly Parton, at the Hollywood Bowl with Jolene gives a different, unexplainable feeling! Does it not? Our eyes are well, but our lips smile wide; there is an inner chaos, but something that feels rather satisfying. We suddenly want to go back and watch Hannah Montana. No, not necessarily the entire show, but perhaps Season 1’s Good Golly, Miss Dolly, and Season 2’s I Will Always Loathe Thee, along with some more clips and other episodes with Aunt Dolly in it! Dolly Parton was Hannah Montana’s godmother before she was Miley Cyrus’ godmother for an entire generation, for those of us who grew up watching them together on screen. There is also something particularly sweet about knowing that the relationship extended beyond Disney Channel.

The Hollywood Bowl tribute brings Miley and Dolly together in a way that feels especially meaningful when you remember how far back their connection goes, but it also gives another thought to ponder upon: how we watched Miley grow up while trying to grow up ourselves, and how strange it is that we can feel so connected to a person whose actual, “real” life we know very little about.

Yes, we know the performances, the pictures, the controversies, the public versions of their stories; but the rest of it is theirs!

We Grew Up Knowing Hannah Montana

When Hannah Montana first appeared, most of us were not watching it and thinking about identity, the pressure of being a celebrity, or the complicated relationship between a public image and a private person.

Let us be honest… we wanted that wig, the songs, and we wanted to know how Miley Stewart managed school, friends, family and a secret pop career without collapsing out of exhaustion. She was a teen, after all! Meanwhile, some of us were changing our personalities depending on the friends’ group we were hanging out with; we were figuring out what we liked, the opinions we were comfortable expressing, the parts of ourselves we were keeping quiet because we did not know how the people would react.

Then Miley started moving away from being Hannah Montana, and suddenly the girl we remembered was doing things that did not fit the version of her we had grown up getting attached to. Her music and public image changed, and so did the conversations around her. Every decision became an opportunity for people to deviate, whether she was making a mistake, or whether she was trying too hard, rebelling, or just becoming herself.

That is perhaps one annoying part about growing up: people remember you at a certain age and decide that version of you is the one you are. You can change, develop new interests, stop wanting things you once upon a time loved, and realise that the person you were at sixteen is not somebody you want to be anymore but someone might still bring up the “old you”. Miley had to deal with this on a wide scale with her adolescence, career, decisions and changing image being discussed by the strangers who thought that they had watched her long enough to know what she should do.

Aunt Dolly Was the Part of the Story

Dolly Parton appeared in Hannah Montana as Aunt Dolly: the glamorous, larger-than-life aunt who could walk into Miley Stewart’s life and immediately ease things and make things more interesting. For many of us, that was how the connection began: through a fictional relationship that was easy to love! Dolly is also Miley’s godmother in real life and reportedly also has a common ancestry, making them seventh cousins, once removed. It was also reported that Dolly Parton willingly became Miley’s godmother back in the early 1990s when Billy Cyrus asked her to serve as the same to his and Tish Cyrus’ eldest daughter, Miley.

Celebrity relationships are particularly easy to romanticise: we see two people together, watch them exchange affectionate words, hear them talk about one another, and start imagining the entire relationship from a handful of public moments. We decide who supported whom, who helped whom when and what every interaction must mean. Sometimes we are just filling gaps because we want the story to make sense.

We know Dolly Parton is Miley’s godmother; we know their relationship goes beyond the work on Hannah Montana, but we do not know every conversation, every difficult day, or what their relationship looks like when the camera is away, and honestly, we do not need to.

Miley Cyrus at Hollywood Bowl: The Tribute Is Ours to “Watch”, Not to “Claim”

This is what makes the Miley Cyrus Hollywood Bowl tribute to Dolly Parton such an interesting moment to revisit. A public tribute can be deeply moving, especially when the person being honoured has been a part of the performer’s life for so long; so close. There is music, of course, but there is also the knowledge that these two women share a history that is more than performance, photographs, television or interviews.

For audiences who remember Aunt Dolly from Hannah Montana, that connection comes with its own little nostalgia trip. We are seeing Miley honour someone who was part of the world through which many of us, in fact, came to know her and it is difficult to not feel something about it, especially as she broke down. Nevertheless, the moment we see on the stage is still just a moment that we see: the internet will take a performance, find a few emotional seconds, caption it and circulate it until everyone explains what they feel it reveals about the Miley-Dolly relationship. The tribute somehow becomes a way for strangers to discuss the private feelings of the two people they have not met. We do this perhaps because we are interested: sometimes we are genuinely touched; sometimes we have followed the artist for years and feel invested in the people who matter to them, but the problem begins when the feelings invested turn into believing we are owed an explanation.

However, what should be understood is that the performance is public, the relationship is not, and there is a difference between the two, even when the internet would pretend otherwise.

We Can Love the Story Without Owning It

Miley Cyrus’ relationship with Dolly Parton did not develop for our entertainment; we just happened to witness and be a part of the relationship and Miley reinventing herself, and because those parts became an ardent part of our cultural memory, we forget that there is much more happening outside.

The Hollywood Bowl tribute gives us a moment to appreciate their connection, to look back at the girl who introduced many of us to the relationship, and to think about everything that has changed ever since, but do we need to know every detail to appreciate what we are seeing? No.

Perhaps Miley helped us survive our own reinventions simply by helping us ignore that growing up means remaining recognisable to everyone who knew us first; perhaps watching her move beyond Hannah Montana made some of us a little more comfortable with the idea that we could change as well, even when people were not entirely ready to accept it.

We can feel connected to all of this without pretending otherwise; feel sentimental about Hannah Montana, be happy to see Miley honour Dolly Parton, and be curious about the woman Miley has become; we can care without demanding access. All of us are figuring it out, so would it not be rather unfair to expect celebrities to explain every version of themselves?

What are your thoughts? Tell us in the comments.

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