In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and actress Miley Cyrus joins the show to talk about how her singing voice has changed over the years, and how it has affected her life. She also talks about how she s found a new purpose in life, and what it s like being a woman in the entertainment industry in her late 60s and early 70s. She also shares some of her favorite memories of growing up in Los Angeles, and gives us some tips on how to deal with the growing pains that come with being a female in the industry, and why it s important to have a voice you can be proud of and use it as a tool to help you live your best life. It s a very special episode, and we hope you enjoy it! Thank you so much to Miley for coming on the show, and thank you for sharing it with us. We can t wait to do it again next week with more of your amazing voices. Thank you, Miley! -Joe Rogan and the crew at J.R.K.E. Experience. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Produced by Haley Shaw. Artwork by Ian Dorsch and Matt Knost, Music by Jeff Kaale. Thanks to our sponsor, and our sponsors, A&W Records. Please rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast and review us on iTunes, Podchaser, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and Podchats! and PodChances, and help us spread the word out there about our podcast, and send us your thoughts, reviews, and reviews and thoughts on the podcast. and more. We re looking out for the best coffee, tips, and shout outs! Thanks again for listening to us out there! Love ya'll! xoxo, Caitie, Caitlyn, Rachael, Jon, and Sarah, Emily, and the Crew at The J.J.A. & the J. Rogan Podcast, and your support is so much love and support is appreciated! -- Thank you for all the love and appreciation, Caity, Kristy, Sarah, Roxy, and Rachie, J.A., and R.J., and the rest of the Crew, and all of your support and support, and more!
00:00:34.000He was just enjoying the art, also in the museum, and started talking to me forever about my voice.
00:00:40.000And then there was a college, some sort of...
00:00:43.000Tripped the museum and then everybody started freaking out and it was so cool just to have someone stop me about my speaking voice because that had never happened to me before I think as I was turned around and I had the mullet so I could have been you know anybody I could have been Anyone it's a heavy voice It's a heavy voice.
00:01:00.000You didn't always have a heavy voice though.
00:01:02.000My kids love Hannah Montana, by the way.
00:01:38.000Mine, I think, honestly, really, I started touring, you know, at probably 12 or 13. And not only was I, the adrenaline that you have after a show, it's not really the singing that affects your voice as much.
00:02:44.000It's kind of like, you know, when you see somebody and I think especially being like a female in the industry, I think growing up and changing and like kind of that there is such a kind of stigma with aging.
00:02:55.000It's a very kind of scary thing as a female in the industry.
00:02:58.000And I've thought about it a lot and thought about my voice.
00:03:02.000I actually had someone when I was doing an interview a couple months ago said, you know, she sounds like she stayed up all night smoking too many darts.
00:03:52.000That was not important for someone that was making so much capital for such a big corporation.
00:03:58.000Off days are days that That money's not coming in and I definitely probably didn't get the training that I needed to say, hey, you know what?
00:04:07.000I don't want to do this till I'm 15. I want to do this till I'm 80. And that wasn't always considered.
00:04:18.000But it had to be really odd to be working that much and be a young girl.
00:04:23.000The balance it trained me to have is something that I don't think you are going to get taught any other way besides jumping in the deep end of the pool and hoping you know how to swim.
00:04:35.000There was no way I could have prepared for the amount of balance I would have to learn to kind of teeter because, you know, at one point, again, it went from—it was school, then it went from— How much weed can I actually smoke and still play a teenage superstar on the Disney Channel?
00:05:00.000I remember one time when, and I don't smoke anymore, and I'm sober, How long have you been sober for?
00:05:07.000I've been sober since pretty much the vocal surgery kind of did it for me because I just learned so much about the effects, which, again, you're just not taught.
00:05:48.000There was other things that I end up, you know, I like to go up.
00:05:53.000So I now just avoid really drinking, because I like to wake up at 110%.
00:05:58.000But it's never really been my problem, and I could see myself having a drink of celebration in the future.
00:06:04.000But I get so fucking hungover now that I'm like, Volcanoes erupted in my brain, you know, so so it's really just a personal preference, but it's definitely not Anything that I promote in I think it's a lifestyle everyone should be I think everyone should experiment It's a good time and you learn a lot of things about yourself and the people around you But now I'm watching I have younger siblings and they're going through that and I don't know how my mom did it with me because it's scary Yeah,
00:06:32.000I think if we're going to acknowledge the fact that all these things exist, cocaine exists, pills exist, marijuana exists, we should teach people how to do it right.
00:07:06.000It's actually funny you bring this up because I had the idea this week, not that I really have time to do this in the near future, but I would like to at some point in my life.
00:07:31.000And I think there's a way to not terrify children of life, even though I go in and out of periods where I think life is really overwhelmingly terrifying.
00:07:40.000And my position, I tell myself all the time, if you're not enjoying this life, Honey, you got it coming in the next one, because I better fucking love this life.
00:08:22.000And so now that I have people that I've had in my life, I feel that I have people in my life that I've known for 15, 20 years, and not many people in my position get to say that.
00:08:34.000My dad's loopy as hell, but I love him so much.
00:08:38.000He has no way of ever hearing this because my dad doesn't have Wi-Fi or anything but a Blackberry, so I can tell you what I got him for his birthday.
00:10:34.000And I would have him do all the illustrations so it stays in that kind of surrealist world.
00:10:41.000Would get the kids to want to read this book is that the illustrations are still surreal.
00:10:45.000And I like that about children's books.
00:10:47.000But I do think that we do need to talk about, you know, equality.
00:10:51.000And I do think there needs to be diversity in children's books.
00:10:54.000And I think also, we just need to talk about the fact I was actually happy to talk to you today, because I didn't get to do therapy today, because I would be with you, but it's kind of the same thing.
00:11:02.000And I was talking to him and I said, you know, sometimes it scares me that I'm too tough.
00:11:06.000And I feel like I'm not jaded and I'm not cold, but I feel too tough.
00:11:10.000And he goes, well, I'm proud of that because life is tough.
00:11:27.000I don't fall to the floor and crawl up in a ball the way that I used to, and I think that's a part of me growing up.
00:11:32.000I recently just went through a very public divorce that fucking sucked.
00:11:36.000What really sucked about it wasn't the fact that Me and someone that I loved realized that we don't love each other the way that we used to anymore.
00:11:45.000I can't accept the villainizing and just all those stories.
00:11:52.000It's just amazing to me that the public kind of thinks that there's no gap of time that they didn't see that could possibly be what led to this.
00:12:03.000One day you were happy on the carpet and the next day you were making out with your friend in Italy.
00:13:22.000It comes into my life by if I walk by a magazine stand, which I like to walk on the street, and it says, like, Miley's on drugs and pregnant, and then I think, one of those things are true, but not the other.
00:14:27.000From always being behind, especially when it comes to the media.
00:14:31.000So now, what I love about this, what I love doing, you know, a show like yours is like, we talk about it right now, and people hear it right now, so you're getting the real information.
00:14:39.000You're not getting information from, all right, you know, I shot a magazine cover, I did an interview, I was la-la in love with my boyfriend.
00:14:47.000I mean, that literally happened when I did Vanity Fair.
00:14:49.000I flew there like a week after I'd gotten married.
00:14:51.000By the time the damn thing was on the stands, I was divorced.
00:14:54.000It was like, come on, you know, you're really not able to tell your story in real time.
00:14:59.000And that's what I love about the new way that music is happening and streaming.
00:15:03.000And I love the idea that, like, I threw up that Flamin' Lips record I did on SoundCloud.
00:15:08.000And it was like, you know, no one had to buy it.
00:15:09.000Or I sound 105. But it's very exciting because I really hated always being behind myself.
00:15:15.000And I think that's what now I can use my art as my kind of...
00:15:22.000I guess the way that I can talk to the press isn't what bothers me, it's kind of the public, you know?
00:15:28.000And I got in this habit where when people would meet me, I guess I didn't get in a habit, it just became a thing that happened constantly, was I'd meet someone and they'd go, Man, you're not as crazy as I thought you'd be.
00:15:42.000I don't know what you thought I'd be doing right now if you thought I'd be in space buns dropping acid or something.
00:15:47.000But people say that to me all the time, that I'm not as crazy as they thought I would be.
00:15:51.000And that's just a weird thing to say to someone.
00:15:54.000Yeah, but the public image, like what they sold of you, you know, here you are, Hannah Montana, and then all of a sudden you're this very sexual singer, and you're doing all this crazy stuff, and you're on television shaking your ass, and everybody's seeing that, and they're like, oh, Miley Cyrus is out of control now.
00:16:09.000So then that becomes the narrative, right?
00:16:11.000It's funny when people make the narrative when you become in control that now you're out of it.
00:17:20.000I have to do the things to be able to have that longevity.
00:17:25.000And so I would write down, you know, kind of an idea of where I'd want conversations to go even with the people in my life and what do I want out of them.
00:17:34.000And I had to stop Going, hey, just because they wrote that down, it's true.
00:17:38.000Because something about writing it down gives a lot of power.
00:17:41.000I don't like to write down things that I don't mean.
00:17:44.000That's why I don't write songs that I hate.
00:17:46.000Because once you write it down, they are alive.
00:17:49.000So what you're saying is that reading things that other people wrote about you made you think that those things were real.
00:17:54.000So it fucked with your own personal narrative.
00:17:58.000Sometimes I'd be trying to prove something that I didn't need to prove.
00:18:01.000Like all of a sudden I'd be trying to prove that I'm not crazy when I knew I wasn't crazy.
00:18:09.000And, yeah, I just think also, I mean, when we're talking about realistic children's books, I think the stigma that kind of surrounds, you know, youth growing up, rebelling, and then craziness, and then what's the line between that and mental illness?
00:18:23.000And, you know, I do have some kind of genetic family history of alcohol.
00:18:28.000I mean, that totally gets erased when you're a celebrity.
00:18:44.000I think for you, I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with writing a book and writing a realistic children's book.
00:18:50.000But I think you could do a lot of good by just making little YouTube videos.
00:18:55.000You make little YouTube videos just talking and explaining, hey, this is what I did, and this is where I fucked up, and this is why you shouldn't do it this way.
00:19:03.000These are the drugs you got to be really careful about.
00:19:05.000These are drugs that are really dangerous.
00:19:07.000And look, if you want to have like one drink, you want to have one drink, just have one fucking drink.
00:19:37.000I just felt like when you're talking about some of the episodes that they can bring on, I maybe have a little some of those tendencies already.
00:20:24.000I read and I kind of I was going on a trip when I was maybe 17 years old and I was walking through the airport and I saw a book that said Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Dr. Daniel Amen, who's now been my therapist for 10 years.
00:21:24.000The person upstairs is like annoying the hell out of me.
00:21:27.000So I got this book and it got me to get onto the plane.
00:21:30.000Now I had a few anxious breakdowns on that.
00:21:34.000When you go to places like going in the middle of the jungle, you take all those little planes and all of a sudden you're on a four-wheeler going to wherever you're going.
00:21:39.000Every now and then I'd have to stop because I would get so lightheaded and stabbing chest pains and all this.
00:21:44.000And he said, drop weed, first of all, get rid of the weed, get rid of the psychedelics.
00:21:49.000And I also cut gluten from my diet from a little bit of a time so I could get an idea of like, what's my body on a natural level?
00:21:55.000And I started doing, you know, kind of blood work and I did some spec scans, which he specializes in.
00:22:01.000So like actually looking at my brain, because what I really like about the spec scan is...
00:22:04.000You know, you wouldn't tell me I have a broken arm without freaking looking at it.
00:22:07.000I could tell you, ow, it hurts, blah, blah, blah.
00:22:11.000So a SPEC scan, we might have to look up exactly what it stands for, because I don't remember this.
00:22:16.000But basically, it's kind of like an x-ray, and it kind of shows you almost like in those thermal-type colors of the activity of your brain.
00:22:51.000If we're looking at like female and male brains, I mean, they're totally lit up in different spots, you know?
00:22:57.000Actually, I think he's even worked with some athletes of yours.
00:23:00.000He works a lot of like with football players because he says, you know, like, you know, I'm almost like a football player for the life that I lead.
00:23:07.000If you're going to go and live under this amount of stress, which is pretty abnormal, it's like you're getting hit in the head an abnormal amount of times, then I've got to do everything else right.
00:23:15.000So I've got to be pretty diligent about my supplements.
00:23:17.000I've got to really care about the food that I eat.
00:23:19.000My mom always says, like, you guys are overthinking it.
00:24:10.000But I think I am kind of like an athlete in the way of like, if I'm going to be doing this kind of abnormal type lifestyle, then I have to do everything else right.
00:25:06.000She got hit by a car when she was 15. Before that, she was mild-mannered, really good at math.
00:25:12.000After she got hit by a car, she had to spend nine months at a mental institution, couldn't count anymore, and she became this wild lady who everybody knows as Roseanne.
00:25:28.000She knows that there's something to that.
00:25:29.000Dr. Amen, we've talked about this a lot.
00:25:31.000So when I get really overwhelmed, I also have a tendency that if I know something stupid, I just got to try it to know that it's stupid, which makes it stupid because I already knew about it.
00:25:40.000Sometimes I'm like, is it better to know it's dumb and do it or to not know it's dumb and do it?
00:25:43.000But don't you think part of that- That's the head injury.
00:25:48.000It's the final loam of your breaks, you know?
00:25:50.000But just the way you developed as a human being, being that famous at, you know, 12 years old, doing stadiums.
00:25:56.000But I do like, I like looking at my brain and going, okay, listen, like, someone cut my breaks, right, on my brain, and I have to take all the things, omega, I've been, was vegan for a very long time, and I've had to introduce fish and omegas into my life because my brain wasn't functioning properly.
00:28:10.000I really need breaks on my brain because I did I did not have that where I in my new song It says I can't bite the devil on my tongue.
00:28:17.000That was like a really hard thing for me to learn how to do but instead of going I'm just totally impulsive and the most reactive person ever I look and go well, but my dad also slammed my head into a tree when I was two So, you know, it's maybe as a dad that's hard to hear that scares a shit I've given him an award for worst dad ever.
00:28:36.000Every time I go, you know, if we're on Hollywood and there's the best dad award, I scratch out best and put worst.
00:28:42.000But he was also the best because he would allow me to do a lot of other crazy things that were awesome.
00:29:02.000You shove as many chickens in the back of the Corvette as you can while I'm signing autographs, and we're going to get the hell out of here.
00:29:14.000He was about to go work for David Lynch.
00:29:16.000Well, he was going to audition for him for Mulholland Drive, and my dad brought the chickens in the Corvette, and he said, if you're going to have chickens in the Corvette, you're playing the pool guy.
00:29:37.000And we did, and they let them on the plane, and we had them in the purse, and they lived in a bathtub on Hollywood and Highland in some hotel for a long time.
00:29:45.000And then we got home, and the night we got there, our dogs got in the chicken coop and made them all.
00:32:53.000Relationship to fame because he went from nothing to everything.
00:32:57.000I went kind of from having, you know, Everything if we look at really the way I grew up lived in a big house on a big farm The only thing that was sad about is what didn't have kind of neighbors or normal kids Around cuz I lived on this big kind of isolated farm,
00:33:12.000but went to school had this normal life But I mean if we really look at it I didn't know when I was a kid that I had everything but I had everything so I went from having it all to having more and that I don't know what's harder to kind of humanize,
00:33:27.000I guess, about yourself because my life is very unique.
00:33:32.000And so it's very hard for me to sit with someone and relate to them.
00:33:36.000And I think that made me really scared because my mom doesn't like to be alone.
00:33:41.000So I have that fear in my mind if I don't want to be alone.
00:33:43.000But I think what makes you lonely isn't the amount of people are around, but like, am I relating to people?
00:34:54.000When you say more tough, you're talking about the difference between someone who reacts overly emotionally to something.
00:35:01.000You would fall to the ground and curl up in a ball and cry about things, and now you can get over them.
00:35:05.000That, to me, is a sign of perspective.
00:35:07.000Okay, so here's where it is, and I don't even want to have a conversation about, like, really, you know, sexism or men versus women, because, like, I love dudes, you know, and I actually relate to dudes a lot more.
00:35:18.000But I think men in my life have told me that I'm cold, or I'm a cold fucking bitch, because I leave when things are done.
00:36:43.000They don't need your constant approval and affection and attention.
00:36:47.000And now that we're using this word Just for the record, I guess I really don't need to be in a relationship at all, so that's good we got to this point.
00:37:34.000I guess really from 2015. I mean, there's been little months, so maybe about five years.
00:37:39.000Like, I've had, you know, a few months here and there where I've been single, but not for a long period of time.
00:37:43.000And, you know, something I'm really excited about is this VMA performance that's coming up.
00:37:48.000And I love that it's the first time that I'm going to be on that stage as a single, badass, grown, evolved, secure.
00:37:57.000Woman that's done a lot of work like I've done I've done the work and that's the thing is some people say You know like how did you how did you get here?
00:38:05.000You know you turned out pretty good and it's like dude, I've I worked really hard at it But just seriously get it in your head anytime someone gives you a hard time about being strong You're not a bad person.
00:38:18.000Just because you're strong, just because you don't cry as easy as you used to, that's ridiculous.
00:38:41.000My friend who's sitting out there right now tried to immediately make me happy because I just went through a breakup and showed me a hot guy on Instagram.
00:38:49.000And I started scrolling and I see him putting this powder on his dog's ass.
00:38:52.000I'm like, I don't want him, but I want that stuff for the dog's ass.
00:39:20.000And then all the men on set's face are the best because it's like, I thought Miley Cyrus bringing Kate Moss is going to be the best day of my life.
00:39:26.000And then she comes in with her big ass, literally, that I have baby powder.
00:39:31.000She has diapers because I put diapers on her for when she comes to set because her butt is like atrocious.
00:39:36.000Do you just need to get her on a diet?
00:40:39.000Literally, she was free and I now have to remind myself they say the best things in life are free and when I look at her and her big ass, I know it's true.
00:42:21.000Everything about me is taped on, honey.
00:42:23.000It's an easy, at night you just go, and I like, yeah, it's all this tape.
00:42:28.000People that play guitar and musical instruments and they hurt their hands.
00:42:33.000I actually had a guy tell me that I had grubby little kid hands.
00:42:37.000And I liked that about it because I did have dirt and that was because this was at a time where I was doing drugs and I wanted to know where the hell the gophers go.
00:42:45.000So there was a gopher hole in my backyard.
00:42:47.000And I'm like, where do they keep going?
00:45:28.000I was following Nat Geo on Instagram, and I love the pictures of the spirit bears.
00:45:32.000I love those beautiful bears up in BC. And I kind of started reading about the wolf cull up there, and I got really kind of invested in these animals.
00:45:40.000I sent a DM and said, is there any way that some point I could go with maybe some of your researchers and I could see some of these bears or wolves for myself because I think I'd be even more inspired to fight for them if I could actually see them and know that they're really real because I've only ever seen them from a picture.
00:46:16.000So we end up taking two little planes, three boats, and we end up getting to this dude, Ian, who shoots for Nat Geo and shoots up in BC. And it was just amazing.
00:46:27.000And I got to see all the spirit bears.
00:46:30.000I got to go into where they do all their research on their boat.
00:46:33.000So they'll leave these kind of like trap combs where it just brushes the bear's hair when it walks by so they can understand kind of more about it.
00:47:42.000Apparently, you know, I directed this last video and apparently when I read my presentations, I have like a different voice, you know, like when you answer the phone.
00:48:09.000Your life of growing up famous, that doesn't end well for most people.
00:48:16.000You're remarkably together for someone who grew up famous.
00:48:21.000You know, it's a weird way, it's a weird alchemy to put together a human being where in your developmental stages, pre-teen in fact, you're hugely famous.
00:48:39.000Or do you think it's a manageable thing?
00:48:41.000I would say it isn't recommended because like I kind of said in the beginning of this, it's like jumping in the deep end of the pool and not knowing if you can swim or not and it can go one way or the other.
00:48:55.000And that I don't think comes very recommended and I wouldn't recommend it.
00:49:00.000I don't know what it is, but I feel like I've kind of been given this, like, special, I don't know, kind of special understanding of, I don't even know where it comes from because I'm really not religious,
00:49:15.000and maybe it comes from, like, education of getting a good understanding of, you know, I've got kind of a good idea of, like, what fame does on kind of, like, if we're looking at it from a level of...
00:49:25.000Were you thinking about this when you were young?
00:49:27.000I wasn't thinking about this when I was young, but I started thinking about it at the time where I think it kind of mattered that I could go one way or the other, and that was probably when I was 17 and I bought Dr. Amen's book about understanding why I can't get high enough on drugs and why I end up doing more drugs than anybody else.
00:49:45.000I wrote a song where one of the lines says, I'll go toe-to-toe like I'm Ali.
00:49:48.000I'll do more that could be the biggest guy in the room, and I'll say, I'll be able to do more drugs than you.
00:49:52.000But it's because my level of what high is...
00:49:56.000I felt it from, I mean, when you're having 15,000 people scream your name and sing along to your songs, it's like, you know how you're saying your float tank is getting high without drugs?
00:50:05.000So it's really hard to come down off that, and I never luckily had a problem with taking downers to bring myself down, but there was a lot of people around me that was like, you know, just take half of these and you'll be fine.
00:50:24.000There's a real big connection between people with traumatic brain injury and the need for either alcohol or cocaine or something to perturb your natural state of consciousness.
00:50:36.000And a lot of my brain is really, really on.
00:50:41.000But then again, if you kind of look at the part, that frontal lobe that kind of tells you, you know, yes or no or stops you from making a bad choice, mine gets a little sleepy sometimes when I'm not doing, especially when it comes to the diet.
00:50:51.000When my diet isn't, you know, it's annoying because...
00:51:21.000My, I guess, kind of like my grounding in the weight that I have to my diet, to my supplementing, to my maintenance, to the diligence, to the sport that being an entertainer is.
00:53:27.000Even if I'd show up there and I'd maybe been partying too much and she would yell at her manager, Kenny, who's been her manager and in her band from the beginning.
00:53:34.000Kenny, we gotta get her some Mexican food or something.
00:53:41.000And all of a sudden all this food starts showing up in my room and I think she's probably seen, not just in her own band, but I think she's seen everything.
00:53:51.000And I think she's seen it go the wrong way.
00:53:53.000You know how we're talking about whether you swim or drown?
00:53:55.000I think she's seen a lot more people drown and so she always tries to feed me.
00:53:58.000But that's where it's got to be really hard if you're a woman like her who's been there, done that, and then you see some young girl coming up and you're like, damn, this lady right now is in the waves.
00:54:07.000And you've been in the waves many times where that ship is rocking back and forth and you don't know which way it's going to go.
00:54:14.000When you're a 17-year-old kid and you're doing a lot of mushrooms and smoking a lot of pot and also you're super fucking famous and really people can't tell you shit, which is part of the problem.
00:56:11.000And when I don't work, that's when I get in trouble.
00:56:13.000But you also got to think about there's genetics involved you know your father was a musician and you know just and then all your life being in the public eye like that and Performing and working and then just the amount of effort that you put in when you were a kid touring all the time I mean you're fucking geared for that shit,
00:56:32.000you know And I just feel like people like that your body can betray you sometimes I know that.
00:56:37.000I have a lot of physical pain, to be honest with you.
00:56:40.000And that's something I'm working on and trying to figure out, too.
00:58:55.000I did a trial period of 18 of kind of removing things, because I think when you try all these different diets, like, okay, now I'm going to try keto, now I'm going to try vegan, now I'm going to try this.
00:59:04.000You're doing it at such a kind of, it's really hard to know what's affecting you.
00:59:08.000So I tried to go slowly, like, okay, it takes a freaking long time, but going through and going, I'm going to eliminate this now, and then I'm going to put it back and see how I feel.
00:59:17.000My body, when I am Supplementing, especially with the omegas, like the omegas have really changed my life for me.
00:59:23.000I think, again, you know, you kind of refer to me as something like a car, and I think that we are kind of like a car, and I was like so dry from having none of these healthy fats in my diet.
00:59:33.000I did what I could with like as many frickin' avocados a day as I could have in other things, but it's hard to get the fat.
01:00:20.000or earth signs, but I love water signs because I love being...
01:00:24.000And in general, I love people that are kind of like fluid and that can kind of put some of that on my flame because it gets overwhelming sometimes, the amount of heat and energy that I generate.
01:00:36.000I actually was reading something about ducks that's interesting, the way that ducks handle their energy.
01:01:21.000Whether it's the beginning of the day or the end of the day, I need something to go and flap my wings and get out that extra energy because I think that's part of the physical pain.
01:01:30.000Like when I went to go check in on the pain before and I've been to a lot of people here and...
01:01:36.000No one seemed to help me with the physical pain.
01:02:03.000Did you get an MRI? I've done everything and everything looks good.
01:02:07.000You know, everyone says we have no idea, you know, kind of what's going on, but they're not really taking into consideration my lifestyle, which that has to do something.
01:03:08.000The song was coming out at the same time and when I got into the gym like I would sometimes just start crying because I love them like family so when you walk in I would just start crying.
01:03:16.000Because you know that you could be comfortable around them.
01:03:18.000Just comfortable and then I think that it's hard to go okay now I'm gonna beat your ass because I think he thinks life is beating my ass but maybe I need just Maybe it's tough love.
01:04:20.000Throw someone else into your existence.
01:04:22.000First of all, A, you didn't choose it, okay?
01:04:24.000You were a little kid and you became famous.
01:04:26.000B, being in the public eye and just dealing with the things we're talking about, about people writing stories that are fake about you, all that stuff comes at a price.
01:04:34.000And if you read it, it comes at a heavier price.
01:04:36.000But even just knowing it exists, it gets in your head.
01:04:39.000You have to be very strong to be able to ward that off, and the idea that you don't, and that it's easy, and that a regular life is easier.
01:05:21.000And so for you to reach adulthood and try to be conscious and try to be sentient and try to like to just Stay balanced.
01:05:29.000It's you're dealing with a situation that 99.999% of the population has no fucking idea what you're handling Yeah, the only people that are gonna understand it are people that also grew up famous.
01:05:41.000Yeah, which I have a hard time with because I haven't made that exactly my peer group and now I kind of am like I think I've been really searching for some sort of normalcy in my life and For sure.
01:05:53.000And so I think I haven't surrounded myself with the top Of kind of people that are also at this level.
01:06:18.000You feel like people that are regular folks, they treat you weird or they like you more than they should or they praise you more than they should because you're an alien.
01:06:29.000You're not like a regular person that walks into a room and you'll never be a regular person.
01:06:36.000And I think rather than trying to prove excellence in any way when I walk in a room, I try to prove really hard that I'm normal.
01:08:19.000And the reason why I say that with confidence is because I'm really willing to do the work.
01:08:24.000And I'm also I'm willing to look at myself from a human level and also look at like what my body needs to thrive.
01:08:33.000And I know that it can't be cocaine for me, and I know that it can't be alcohol, and I know that unfortunately I love fucking fish, but at this point I gotta eat it to be able to have my brain to work as quickly as you and I are going right now, or what I have to do later today, and going to the studio tonight, and I understand myself from a human,
01:08:51.000there's nothing about me that thinks I am superhuman, and I think that, I think I would take that as something that That makes me unique because I don't think that I'm really – I know that there's something special about me in my life, but I don't feel that on this level of being a human that I'm different.
01:09:09.000And so I know what it takes to keep this motor going and I also know when to take time.
01:09:15.000Well, all those things you said are perfect.
01:09:17.000As long as you have doubt, as long as you want to do better, as long as you're recognizing who you are is not exactly who you want to be.
01:10:09.000Man, you know, I had someone that tried to hurt me and say that I've had really amazing people in my life, but I've had people that have tried to hurt me too.
01:10:20.000I even brought my little scarf just in case I got emotional, because I really might.
01:10:24.000I had someone recently try to tell me that everyone in my life is afraid of me.
01:11:12.000And the fact that you feel guilt about all this, and the fact that you want things to be difficult, those are all the best indicators that you're trying to do better.
01:13:50.000I think I really respect the way you're looking at things.
01:13:53.000I like the fact that you know that you're in this weird situation and you actually feel guilty for it.
01:13:59.000I don't think it's necessarily good to feel guilty, but the fact that you do is strong because it shows that you're conscious of how weird it is.
01:14:07.000We've been working on my guilt a lot and what's funny is like I always want to cancel therapy when nothing's going on, which I guess is when we kind of need it, but I always want to cancel it.
01:14:15.000And then we start talking about guilt and like, we got to work on your guilt and whatever.
01:14:19.000But I'm like, I only call you out of guilt.
01:14:20.000I don't want to do therapy and I don't even want to talk to you about what's going on in my life.
01:14:25.000So we can't get rid of it too much because guilt makes us do good things.
01:14:27.000I feel the same way about fear and anxiety also.
01:14:44.000I had a very great ayahuasca experience that I saw some things.
01:14:48.000I saw like, I guess people take ayahuasca a couple of times, end up seeing these snakes that end up like taking you underground and you kind of meet mama ayahuasca and she walks you through everything.
01:15:00.000Ayahuasca the woman that I was seeing is at the time where I just kind of started to become Like really dedicated to the veganism and she reached down my throat and pulled out every dead animal I had ever eaten and made me throw it up But I didn't see the animal that it was like I didn't see like a cow or pig or chicken like I saw me puking up all the animals I saw me picking up seals puking up a seal not fun Elephants all these other animals and I would see all the animals coming out of my body and I You're not supposed to have a companion in your ayahuasca
01:16:05.000What you see through psychedelics is it's not just the psychedelic.
01:16:12.000It's what you bring to the psychedelic.
01:16:14.000That's why set and setting is so important.
01:16:17.000Well, you're supposed to be sober, I think, two weeks before you actually do the ayahuasca, which I was the only one that didn't do that.
01:16:22.000Yeah, I don't know if that's necessary.
01:16:24.000I think DMT will take you there no matter what.
01:16:27.000I've done some good DMT. I saw all my personalities greet me one time on DMT. All my personalities I saw and then I was like, I saw me as like a really ugly crier and then like me screaming, yelling at people and it was nice.
01:16:39.000As I was sitting on the couch as it started to hit me, they almost kind of like accordioned back into my body.
01:16:44.000The thing about all this craziness and the manic behavior and all of your guilt and all of your anxiety, there's something that comes out in your music.
01:16:55.000There's some of that that comes out in this energy.
01:17:08.000There's something that they have when, you know, they're bottling it all up inside, and whether it's they're playing the guitar, whether they're singing, when they sing, it comes out.
01:17:17.000You know, and when you sing, it comes out.
01:17:41.000Maybe that's what it is because I noticed that my voice got better as I Well, it's also probably you're more comfortable with who you are having gone through that.
01:17:52.000The thing about having like a really, not an easy life, but a privileged life.
01:17:57.000Like, you know, you've had so many doors open to you and so much wealth and so much success.
01:18:03.000When you do something hard or something hard happens to you, at least you go, okay, I got through.
01:18:48.000I mean, this is what your emotions and all that shit that bothers you and freaks you out and all the chaos, when you get in front of that microphone, that comes out.
01:18:56.000It's almost, yeah, I guess your life is almost like...
01:19:14.000Well, it's because your whole life you developed putting on a show.
01:19:17.000You know, and we talked, you know, obviously, I think a little bit about kind of in the beginning of this talking about technology and how it's changed things for me and streaming and all these things.
01:19:27.000The people that don't need one sometimes to say the things that they say, it gives them a lot of power and you've got to have a lot of restraints.
01:27:58.000Like when I do feel guilty about like all my you know kind of what we talked about just like when I start feeling that guilt and I feel guilt that like when I tell someone I can't do this because I need to focus on me or I need to like take the time that I'm cooking for you to be using that time for my meditation and I become that person like I just give so much and I just love that she says if you can't love yourself how in the hell are you gonna love anybody else?
01:35:25.000Well, I would want to be that way with the next artist, and I still am.
01:35:29.000Like, even from my position, I never like to say or seem like I think I know something that a new artist doesn't, but I've been doing it now 15 years.
01:35:38.000My show came out when I was 12. I'm 27, going to be 28 in a month.
01:35:41.000It's not even about whether or not you know something that they don't.
01:35:51.000And I just feel like it's kind of, you know, I never knew jealousy or competition through Dolly, through Joan, through Stevie.
01:35:58.000That's why when I reach out to Stevie, she says, like, I know that this Corona thing's going on, but can we sit six feet apart in my backyard and talk?
01:36:44.000Like my back cracks like crazy, everything.
01:36:47.000You know, down to when I'm asked what hurts, I literally feel embarrassed to say from the end of my toe to the top of my head pretty much hurts a lot of the time.
01:36:55.000But I'm working on that pain management and I do like CBD. CBD is awesome.
01:39:32.000You know, and there was actually even some comments that day about, it was just an interesting conversation in regards to lighting because I've been kind of learning a lot, you know, from directors.
01:39:43.000I didn't go to film school, but I have been put through that in that way.
01:39:47.000So I directed the last video and that's what I look forward to doing in the next like 10 years.
01:39:50.000I'd love to write and direct and, you know, kind of work on film in that way.
01:39:54.000So now I have a better understanding of cameras and lighting operation and so I was just asking some questions about not even on some diva shit like I only want to get shot from this side whatever I wanted the lights to be turned off and that the lighting of the room to be just lighting me so no key light no beauty light and beauty light is Always used on women.
01:40:12.000And I said, turn the fucking lights off.
01:40:14.000You would never tell Travis Scott or Adam Levine that he couldn't turn the beauty light off.
01:41:15.000And so they're asking a lot of questions about that and, you know, like...
01:41:19.000Well, how long is glam going to take and all this stuff?
01:41:21.000And I was like, I mean, I can't really nail it enough, too.
01:41:24.000It's like, I did come from the world of Dolly Parton, and I love pop culture for entertainment and escapism.
01:41:29.000And again, you know, we're joking about the hoodie conversation, but I mean, like, you know, for me, I, there's nights where I don't do that.
01:41:36.000You know, at Chris Cornell, I had on a pair of black pants and a fucking Chris Cornell t-shirt.
01:41:41.000The BMAs is a pop culture show celebrating pop culture.
01:41:44.000And I wanted to bring, especially in this time of, you know, COVID-19, all these at-home performances, like, I want to give my fans escapism.
01:41:54.000How hard is it to deal with people that are directing you like that?
01:41:57.000How hard is it to deal with other people and their vision and their talking and their this and their that when you're just trying to get out what's in your head and what your vision is?
01:42:56.000And that's why I loved making my last video so much and directing it was because, one, I thought about my scenes almost like a relationship.
01:43:17.000And that's what I hated when I was a kid, you know.
01:43:20.000From directors not knowing what they want and then getting frustrated with the child for not performing properly.
01:43:24.000It's like, but you're not communicating.
01:43:26.000And I'm a child and you're an adult and you're not communicating properly so you're working me into the ground to get something that you don't know what you want.
01:43:36.000And that was always really frustrating to me and I think that's why now a non-negotiable in my relationship or dating life is you better know what you want because I'm just not interested in taking another 10 years like I did with my first love figuring that out.
01:43:53.000When you're putting together music, do you have anybody that, like if you're doing an album or you have a song, do you collaborate with people?
01:44:01.000Would you write the songs entirely on your own and bring them to other musicians?
01:44:13.000When I started working on my very first record, and it was called Breakout, and it was because I was kind of breaking out of the character that I was in.
01:45:10.000My mom is the reason I'm sitting here.
01:45:12.000So your mom and your grandma would come with you on the road and you would just go town to town, arena to arena, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, eat, sleep, wake up, there you go, here's the mic, you look beautiful, go to school.
01:47:13.000Well, you know, maybe growing up and seeing all the crazy shit that happened to you, it's almost like growing up around an alcoholic and never wanting to drink.
01:50:45.000I guess I think as that keeps happening, like, as these technology things keep happening on Instagram and these filters keep getting better and better, I'm compared...
01:50:54.000To the people altering, you know, themselves either physically, like with all these things you can do and lasers and all the shit, or to the filters and I've had a really hard time with that, you know, and I think it's hard for me the other day, you know, I get papped walking around my neighborhood in like a really shitty,
01:51:11.000dirty Fleetwood Mac t-shirt that I've been in for five days.
01:51:29.000There's a book called The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and he talks about young girls and depression.
01:51:36.000And this gigantic uptick in depression that directly coincides with the invention of the iPhone.
01:51:41.000And that as the iPhone came up, and then pictures, and then social media, apps.
01:51:47.000So at first a lot of it was social media, and people being mean to each other on Twitter, and all those things because you're not seeing each other.
01:52:10.000But the thing about it with women in particular, with young girls, is that they're comparing themselves to these cartoons.
01:52:17.000These people that aren't even like that picture of me.
01:52:19.000You know, when I got sober, I had to delete all the apps...
01:52:22.000On my phone where I could purchase things like I had to take off Amazon and all the things on my phone because walking around with that slot machine in my pocket all of a sudden I'm getting these bills and things and yes I care about that and I want to live financially responsibly and all the things and I'm looking at this I'm like I don't even remember doing this like it's totally like being high on drugs.
01:53:01.000And it's about how people are addicted to your phones and applications, but it also goes into just the actual physical aspect of addiction and how it works on the brain and how we always like to think of addiction as like it's something that you get hooked physically and you can't live without it.
01:53:18.000No, it's something that you have a compulsion to use and you can't avoid that compulsion for some reason.
01:53:25.000And it doesn't even necessarily have to be good.
01:54:49.000Like it was that thing that I just needed, not because we were in love anymore, but because of the comfort and because my brain said, oh, this feels better.
01:55:54.000Because I don't want to get attached to success or numbers or mean that my art...
01:55:58.000Everyone said, literally, I'll show you the text from my manager.
01:56:00.000He said, unless it's a drag queen death dropping to her new single, don't even bother sending it to her because she's not going to open it.
01:57:13.000You want to earn it, you know, because you think that you kind of got these crazy gifts, being famous at a young age and all this wealth and success at a young age.
01:57:45.000I think you'll totally get if you're ever in Tennessee and you come out to the farm and you see the horses and you see the pigs bite my ankles and all these things.
01:59:19.000So if you start looking at some of the Dead Pet stuff, it'll say written by, and it'll say a group of people, but all the lyrics were written by me.
01:59:25.000It's just any of the melodic stuff in the track.
01:59:28.000Is it all stuff that's new for money purposes?
01:59:32.000Yeah, and I think the way that now streaming is kind of making things a little bit more difficult.
01:59:36.000Because you don't pay someone the way that you would record.
01:59:38.000When record sales, they get their money, whatever.
01:59:41.000And they say that some of the best lawyers don't even understand quite what's going on in the music industry right now because we're having such a change, such a shift in the way that everything's happening.
02:00:52.000But the one thing that I told the kids that, you know, these kind of influencers, I've spoken to some of them before by doing some of this press, you know, they want me to play the song for them, whatever.
02:01:01.000And the one thing that I said that I like is like, at least it's kids creating content for themselves.
02:01:06.000Because I used to have to go through all the middlemen before, before I could put out a fucking video.
02:01:10.000I had to ask, hey, Gary Marsh at Disney, is this okay?
02:03:25.000But point being is that that was free, and then getting to write Younger Now and writing Malibu, I wrote that in the back of the car on the way to, going to The Voice, because I was looking outside the window in the car thinking, like, all of it's true.
02:03:36.000Like, I had never really gone to the beach.
02:03:37.000The closest I had ever really gotten was my parents taking me to Florida, like, one time, and my sister got my toe caught in the revolving door, and, like, I had to go to the hospital.
02:03:46.000It was a nightmare, and my parents swore we're never going on vacation again, but most parents say it and don't mean it.
02:04:16.000That's why I like listening to songs before I go on stage, because it gets me out of my own head, and it gets me into someone else's head.
02:04:24.000And then when it's time to go, and they're like, you're on in three, and then I'll take the headphones off, I'll do a shot, I'll stretch out a little, and then here we go.
02:05:01.000Well, it's called Midnight Sky, and even just the title is kind of inspired by Debbie Harry's Heart of Glass, but I pulled inspiration from Edge of Seventeen, two of my favorite songs.
02:05:11.000Heart of Glass, the reason I love it so much is that the title isn't the repetition in the chorus.
02:05:20.000And so I thought, you know what, my favorite part about it is I love the kind of visual painting of Midnight Sky and what that means.
02:05:29.000And the midnight sky to me is like, if you're really fucking partying, the moon is a disco ball and the stars are all the reflection of light on the ceiling.
02:05:36.000And what I really like about the disco ball is that it's a bunch of broken pieces put back together again, that when you're finally enlightened, it makes this mesmerizing, totally attractive, like people, it's like, you know, it's like the bugs to the light, like people love disco balls, but it's really just a bunch of broken pieces put together.
02:05:53.000And so I felt like that was reflective of me.