I AM GOING TO FIND MILEY CYRUS AND STRANGLE HER.
....
What?
...
Okay, that might be a bit of an overreaction. In reality, I worship Miley and would never strangle her unless she did something unforgivable, like dying.
We all remember 2013. The year of Bangerz, with "Wrecking Ball" and that godforsaken (amazing, artistic, deep, emotional) video of her swinging around on a big metal ball. With "We Can't Stop" and its beautiful 808s. The album where Miley deviated from her synthpop sound that she popularized with Can't Be Tamed, in favor of a hip-hop aesthetic.
I was browsing Genius Lyrics today. After bouncing around some Selena Gomez (who I am just now getting into), I returned to the familiar profile of Miley Cyrus. I clicked on "all songs" and browsed her songs, when I stumbled across something unfamiliar: a song, without album art, entitled "Nightmare."
This was a tad shocking. I know pretty much every Miley song by heart (except for her dead petz. We don't mention that). I swallowed my pride and investigated.
I found a recording and played it. It started out damn catchy. Then, the beat dropped, and I knew.
"Nightmare" is one of Miley Cyrus's best. I can't stop (and I won't stop) listening to it. (As I write this, it's been a solid hour of putting this song on replay. I could listen to it all day.)
I don't even know how to describe it. Powerful synth-ballad? Katy Perry meets Zedd/Au5, but with Miley's addictive sadness? (What "365" should have been?) The perfect combination of Lukasz Gottwald and Henry Russell Walter?
Point is, it's a fucking amazing song, that was going to be the lead single on Bangerz, except, it was never released. It was leaked in 2015. You know, Dead Petz era.
It has me asking the big question. Why wasn't it released?
I was thinking. This song would have been a career-changing song. Miley is known to have "gone crazy" in 2013, between the hair cutting and the weed and the twerking (which we Smilers all love and accept). Making the songs she made established her as a partygoing drug addict, and helped her break free from Hannah Montana.
Yeah. I said it. The reason Miley didn't release this earthshaking song, which would have broken records upon its release, is because releasing "Nightmare" would keep her in a nightmare.
Once Miley was old enough to realize what Hannah Montana did to her, she tried her best to be something else. To not be this bubblegum, pretty-in-pink, feminine popstar.
This song sounds like Katy Perry, the queen of bubblegum pop. So it would have kept her "tamed," and we all know that she can't be tamed.
It would have been a Stereotypical Pop Record. Miley's sound was changing. It was raw, emotional. Releasing Bangerz, as it was, allowed Miley to be whomever she wanted to be. It forced her fans to accept her as she was, to see the real her. And it gave her the freedom to change her sound, to constantly change.
Hiding this perfect ballad of pop perfection ensured that we would have everything else that Miley is.
I'm not happy about it, but I can accept it.
It's about time you hear what I'm talking about. The missing link between "Stop Trying to Live My Life For Me" and "It's my party, I can do what I want to."
Here's the link to a high-quality recording.
https://soundcloud.com/name92/miley-cyrus-nightmare
