Is This the End for Miley Cyrus? Friends Reveal a Desperate Move to Save Her

When Miley Cyrus performed her hit Flowers at the 2024 Grammy Awards, she was on top of the world.

The song was the best-selling single of 2023, broke the record for the most streams in one week on Spotify and, of course, earned her a Grammy for Record of the Year.

After her controversial rebrand from Hannah Montana child star into a highly sexualized pop icon with her 2013 album Bangerz, it seemed Cyrus, 32, had finally found her feet – and that her star would only continue to climb.

But now, with the release of her latest album Something Beautiful – which received mixed reviews and its lead track, End of the World, debuted at only 52 on the Billboard Hot 100 – some worry that rather than being a step in her ascent, she’s about to come crashing down.

‘Her ego is not allowing her to realize that this might be the beginning of the end,’ a source close to Cyrus exclusively told the Daily Mail.

The source fears that she may suffer the same fate as her long-time friend and fellow popstar Katy Perry, 40, who has faced a series of career setbacks over the past year.

‘We aren’t going to see her go to space, so things aren’t as desperate just yet as they can be,’ the source added, referring to Perry’s much-ridiculed Blue Origin trip in April.

Indeed, the Teenage Dream singer has been in perpetual freefall ever since she tried to launch a comeback from her four-year music hiatus with her anthem Women’s World in July last year. The song was an instant dud, peaking at number 63 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Then came her album 143, dubbed an ‘all time low’ for the singer by critics and received a shocking 1.5 star review by Rolling Stone.

To add insult to injury, ticket sales for Perry’s Lifetimes tour this year were abysmal, with more than two-thirds of the seats reportedly still empty at some venues weeks before the show.

Perry seems to be caught in a doom loop, say critics, and it’s a path, our source insisted, that Cyrus is trying hard to avoid.

‘She knows that you always have another chance,’ the source said. ‘I mean look at her father, he was a one hit wonder for how long and then Old Town Road came about and he’s still making waves.’

The Daily Mail has contacted Cyrus’ representatives for comment.

But, they say, it’s not just the reviews for Something Beautiful that Miley is concerned about – her premiere of the album’s accompanying film at the Tribeca Film Festival last week was met with fury by her loyal fanbase.

The Party in the USA singer was heckled by audience members – some of whom had paid up to $800 for a ticket – demanding that she sing, claiming the screening was marketed as a concert.

The unrelenting uproar – likely a result of fans’ last-ditch efforts to see the singer perform live, a rarity due to the condition of her vocal cords, which Cyrus revealed last month – forced Cyrus to break into an impromptu song, performing The Climb.

Last month, she told DJ and producer Zane Lowe on his namesake show on Apple Music 1 that she had Reinke’s edema, a vocal cord disorder that causes swelling and polyp-like growths – but is also responsible for her signature sound.

‘I have this very large polyp on my vocal cord which is giving me a lot of the tone and the texture that has made me who I am, but it’s extremely difficult to perform with because it’s like running a marathon with ankle weights on,’ she explained at the time.

But it didn’t deter fans from calling for a live performance.

‘She was flabbergasted when her fans called her out to sing,’ the source said, ‘and she will be ready the next time when that happens.’

Cyrus herself has acknowledged the mixed reviews of her latest album. She told Lowe that when she first played the record for her friends, they didn’t believe it was ‘pop music’ – but clarified it was because they thought it was ‘just so good.’

In fact, she doesn’t believe that Flowers was the peak of her career – it was a gateway to her next chapter.

She revealed to infamous former White House intern Monica Lewinsky on her podcast this week that she and her family had gone through a ‘dark decade.’

‘Half of us weren’t speaking to each other at one point,’ she said, referencing the fallout from the 2022 divorce of her parents, Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus. ‘And we cleaned all that up.’

But her twenties weren’t just tainted by tumultuous family drama – her love life took a hit, too.

‘I Iost everything during that time in my personal life because of the choices I was making professionally,’ Cyrus said, referencing her overtly sexualized image in her post-2013 era, during which she twerked on singer Robin Thicke at the VMAs then appeared naked in the music video for Wrecking Ball.

‘If I kept dressing or acting a certain way, my relationships fell apart. No one wanted to date me because they didn’t want to be with a woman [whose] sexual expression was not for them, it was shared with the world,’ she added.

And it was part of the reason her decade-long, on-and-off relationship with actor Liam Hemsworth was so fraught until they divorced in 2019.

‘I was engaged at the time, that didn’t work out because I was sharing a part of myself that men wanted to be saved for them only,’ Cyrus said.

She told Lowe: ‘After Flowers, I felt that healing and that validation that something inside of me needed to feel… I really felt free to make the album that I’ve really been craving my whole adult career to make.’

Now, she is smitten with her beau, musician Maxx Morando, 26, who has several writing, producing and instrumental credits on her latest album, which, despite its poor reception, might just be a minor detour for Cyrus.

‘She is a song away from being back, she is a movie role removed from being back on track,’ our source said. ‘Miley is rich, young and not worried about anything as she has plenty of time to right the ship.’