“It’s not like I wanted to”: Miley Cyrus reveals why she stopped performing ‘Hannah Montana’ songs after leaving Disney

Miley Cyrus is opening up about what she was and wasn't allowed to do after leaving Hannah Montana behind.

During a recent interview on the Every Single Album podcast, the Something Beautiful artist, 32, reflected on the end of her hit Disney Channel show in 2011 and how she was subsequently prohibited from performing any songs associated with it:

“After I left Disney, I wasn’t allowed to perform any of the Hannah Montana music,” Cyrus said. “It’s not like I wanted to, I mean performing ‘The Best Of Both Worlds’ between ‘We Can’t Stop’ and ‘Wrecking Ball,’ wouldn’t have really made sense.”

But it was still disappointing being cut off from music that was so closely associated with her formative years:

“It was still sad knowing those songs have my voice, my face, and I wasn’t allowed to sing them,” she said.

Here's everything Miley Cyrus has been up to since leaving Hannah Montana:

As reported by Billboard, this rule changed for Miley Cyrus when, in August 2024, she became the youngest person ever to be inducted as a Disney Legend during a ceremony held at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

“After being inducted as a Disney Legend, I was given permission to perform those songs in the future, which is pretty cool,” she said during her interview.

Miley Cyrus debuted several tracks under her on-screen moniker, and some of her most famous songs to date include The Best of Both Worlds, Nobody's Perfect, We Got the Party, Rockstar, and If We Were a Movie. 20 of her songs went on to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, with He Could Be the One becoming the biggest hit. It clocked in the top 10 back in 2009.

The former child star made her debut as the teenage songstress on the hit series back in 2006. The show ran for four seasons until it ended in 2011. It chronicled the life of Miley Stewart, who led a double life as a famous pop star with the titular name Hannah Montana.

Her real-life dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, also starred as her parent on the show, while Jason Earles acted as her older brother. Emily Osment played her best friend, alongside Mitchel Musso and Moises Arias.

Over the years, Miley Cyrus has had a tumultuous relationship with her father, an established country singer in his own right, though during a recent interview with The New York Times, she revealed that they have since mended their bond.

"I think timing is everything," Miley Cyrus explained. "As I’ve gotten older, I’m respecting my parents as individuals instead of as parents — because my mom really loved my dad for her whole life, and I think being married to someone in the music industry and not being a part of it is obviously really hard. And so I think I took on some of my mom’s hurt as my own because it hurt her more than it hurt me as an adult, and so I owned a lot of her pain."

She added,

"But now that my mom is so in love with my stepdad, who I completely adore, and now that my dad, I see him finding happiness, too — I can love them both as individuals instead of as a parental pairing."

She also credited her maturity for easing things in her bond with her dad:

"I’m being an adult about it," she said. "At first it’s hard, because the little kid in you reacts before the adult in you can go, 'Yes, that’s your dad, but that’s just another person that deserves to be in his bliss and to be happy.' My child self has caught up."

In more recent news, however, Miley Cyrus dropped her latest project, Something Beautiful, which is a 55-minute visual album that dropped this June 6. It will also be premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival that same day. At the premiere, Cyrus credited several female artists for serving as the inspiration:

“I completely worship and idolize the Tina Turners, the Donna Summers, Diana Ross and so many ladies before me that paved this path that I’m on,” she said. “This is my journey but they made it so much easier because they’ve already broken down all the doors for me.”

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The visual album follows the songstress through her awakenings across all the phases of her life, as it features a compilation of 13 music videos co-directed by Miley Cyrus, Jacob Bixenman, and Brendan Walter, all of which were made for songs from her new album of the same name.

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