Star Image - Miley Cyrus

Andrew Goodwin highlights five key aspects of music videos that the audience should look out for. These are:

1. Thought beats (seeing the sound)
2. Narrative and performance
3. The star image 
4. Relations of visuals to song
5. Technical aspects of music video

The star image of an artist is essentially their development over time and has an important part to play in the making of their music videos. Goodwin said 'the creation of character identities for stars provides a point of identification for the audience, which is especially important when lyrics lack depth.' Furthermore, the star image is the best way for an artist to reinforce their new persona, which is often shown through close ups. Here are  few examples from her most recent music videos:

Miley Cyrus is an excellent example of this. Although there are more notable artists that you could research for this, such as Madonna, George Michael and Christina Aguilera, Miley Cyrus is going through her change in star image now, so it is more current with my research.

Miley Cyrus was born on 23rd November 1992. Although having a famous father, she rose to fame with her leading role in hit Disney show 'Hannah Montana'.  As a result of the success from the show, Miley released an album 'Hannah Montana 2:Meet Miley Cyrus' which became the soundtrack for that series. Due to the response of the album, Miley released her second album 'Breakout'. She then starred in 'Hannah Montana: The Movie' and sung the movie soundtrack 'The Climb'.

Putting 'Hannah Montana' behind her, Miley starred in 'The Last Song' alongside Liam Hemsworth (who unbeknownst to her would become her real life fiancee). This film role emphasised Miley's more mature character as the film was one of Nicholas Sparks', a man known for emotional story lines. Miley's next album to be released was 'Can't Be Tamed' which again, showed a change in her character, and gave fans a sense of her growing up, seen through some sexually themed performances.

After taking a couple of years out to focus on her acting carer, Miley came back to the music industry with a bang, releasing 'We Can't Stop' from her fourth album 'Bangerz'. 'We Can't Stop' and 'Wrecking Ball' were promoted through provocative music videos. Moreover, Miley performed a controversial performance of 'We Can't top' alongside Robin Thicke at the 2013 MTV Music Video Awards.

Not only did her music style change, but Miley drastically changed her image. In 2012, she cut her famously long hair and dyed it blonde. Shortly after, in 2013, Miley hired Larry Rudolph as her manager, and left Hollywood Records before signing with RCA Records. The video for 'We Can't Stop' shows Miley in a more sexual way, which led to mixed responses from the public. 'Wrecking Ball' was the second single to be released from 'Bangerz' and once again, featured a sexualised music video in which Miley was wearing little clothing.

This change in appearance, music videos and music style, could be see as Miley's attempt to break away from the Disney star of 'Hannah Montana' that people constantly associated her with. Personally, although much of what she is doing is highly sexualised and creating an uproar across the world, I think it is brilliant what she is doing. She is a 20 year singer recreating herself in the spotlight, what's not to love? She is not the first and will certainly not be the last artist to drastically change their image and cause a controversial response. If anything, all the controversy has made her more famous than she was before.

Here is a mood board I created, showing the different looks Miley has sustained over the years, and to emphasise how much she has grown up and changed:

Her music videos have gone

From this...




To this...



To this...