The news came as a blow for the singer’s fans: Miley Cyrus will not be touring her new album, Something Beautiful. A visual album that marks her return to the forefront and underlines her status as a pop icon, two years after her last great single, Flowers, the most-listened to song in the world in 2023. “I wish I had the desire to go on tour, but I don’t… it’s really hard to stay sober when you’re on tour, it’s hard to maintain your mental well-being,” she said on Good Morning America, sparking a wave of reactions from a fan base divided between empathy with the artist’s exposure of vulnerability and dismay at not being able to see her in the flesh, even more so when many of them were children on her last tour and may never have seen her perform live. The Tennessee native’s last international tour — or at least one comparable to those of contemporaries like Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, and Beyoncé — was in 2014, the era of provocative hits like Wrecking Ball and We Can’t Stop.
“Sobriety is like my God. I need it, I live for it. It’s changed my whole life,” Cyrus declared on a podcast last May, denouncing the stigma that even rock stars face for cutting alcohol out of their routine. “They think you’re not fun anymore,” she noted. After overcoming her addiction to alcohol and marijuana, following a vocal cord condition that nearly jeopardized her career — “being 21 and staying awake and drinking and smoking and partying after every show doesn’t help,” she added — the 32-year-old singer decided to radically transform her lifestyle. She gave up life on the road, which, in addition to having been familiar since her (very short) childhood, she considers incompatible with her mental well-being and keeping her ego in check.
“You have thousands of people screaming at you. You feel all that dopamine and all that love, but you end up completely collapsing at the end of the show. You start to think that it’s not enough for just one person to love you. It has to be 10,000, it has to be 80,000…” she added in the interview.
Far from being a rare bird in the music industry, more and more stars are choosing to swap the glare of the spotlight for the tranquility of the recording studio. Justin Bieber blamed physical and emotional exhaustion for the cancellation of his 2023 Justice World Tour and has yet to confirm whether he will promote his new album, Swag, around the world. Another idol among young audiences, fellow Canadian Shawn Mendes, did the same in 2022, claiming he had to prioritize his emotional well-being. Lorde preferred a series of concerts in smaller venues because she found large stadiums “overwhelming,” and Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine admitted that, although everything in her life has improved since quitting alcohol, sobriety can intensify “the feeling of loneliness on tour.”
British singer-songwriter Arlo Parks, former One Direction vocalist Zayn Malik, and even current musical phenomenon Chappell Roan have refused to extend their highly sought-after international tour dates in order to take care of their mental health. Their comments at the recent Grammy Awards were so resonant that even the record label Universal reacted by launching an initiative for industry members, offering a team of specialized psychiatrists and subsidies to cover treatment costs. In addition to the success of the residency model — like those of Adele, U2, and Bruno Mars in Las Vegas or Bad Bunny in Puerto Rico — megastars like Beyoncé have opted for a different strategy: letting the public come to see them. Her latest show, the Cowboy Carter Tour, only stopped in nine cities, yet this week it broke the all-time record for a country tour, surpassing $400 million.
Ryan Dombal, music critic for the prestigious magazine Pitchfork, believes there is greater awareness regarding the mental health struggles of pop stars. “It’s positive that there’s less stigma when someone decides to cancel a tour for mental health reasons, but there will always be pressure from the industry. There are billions at stake when you think about the entire concert ecosystem, as well as the jobs and incomes of people working in venues or as road crews — people who don’t even get on stage. Miley will be fine. She’s one of the most famous musicians on the planet. But there are many smaller artists who probably have the same issues with touring and sobriety that she does, and who can’t afford not to tour, since in the age of streaming, where most earn very little from their recorded music, touring remains their primary source of income.” Dombal, also founder of the specialized website Hearing Things, attributes the unstoppable rise of mega-concerts to the shortage of global stars: “Today there are fewer artists at the level of Justin Bieber, so the industry squeezes them to the max: they want them to tour as much as possible to fill stadiums and sell tickets for hundreds of dollars. But that doesn’t always make sense, not even for the biggest names, who travel in private jets. It reminds me of that Taylor Swift song, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, where she sings about having to be “on” all the time, no matter how she feels inside. Taylor Swift can do it. A lot of people can’t.”
“You have to understand that a tour for an artist represents a peak of stress that lasts for many days and weeks. It’s a constant job where they face changes of city and stage, travel, limited rest, and constant exposure and evaluation of their performance, with criticism from both the audience and producers. This creates such a level of anxiety that it’s difficult to manage and regulate,” psychologist Ángel Rull explains to this newspaper. Anxiety, stress, fear, and the rethinking of personal self-worth are some of the factors that impact the mental health of those who take the stage. An experience that, according to the specialist, involves a highly unstable duality: “You’re alone, but with no time for yourself; it’s alienating, but the focus is always on you.” In his words, Cyrus’s honesty can help open the debate about the need for self-care. “They’ve always been seen as superhuman, as if they didn’t have the right to break down or stop. Nowadays, many artists are halting their tours, canceling concerts, or delaying albums because they’re not feeling well. This doesn’t mean they were feeling well before, but rather that they’re now prioritizing their mental health. This shows us, on the one hand, that they’re human, and on the other, that mental health is fundamental to a person’s life and requires special care and attention,” he concludes.
The growth of live music, however, doesn’t seem close to slowing down. In Spain, the Association of Music Promoters calls ticket sales revenue for 2024 historic, with up to €725 million spent on concerts. “If we go back to 2003, the first year in the series for which we have data, the revenue figure has multiplied sixfold, which gives us a clear idea of the current dimension of live music and how it has managed to become an essential part of the cultural and social life of our country,” concedes Albert Salmerón, president of the association. Bruce Springsteen, Karol G, Luis Miguel, and Taylor Swift internationally, and Melendi, Estopa, and Robe Iniesta nationally, all broke records in Spain and made last year an “emblematic” one.
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