Entertainment

Watch Her Surprising Cover Of "Hey Ya"

by Mallory Schlossberg

This might be the most surprising thing you’ll hear all week, but you’ve got to listen to Miley Cyrus’s country cover of “Hey Ya,” which stops the show in her Bangerz set. It’s really freakin’ good.

Surely you’ve all been following the dripping-in-sex, hot-dog-riding, Bill-Clinton-fellating debauchery that is the Bangerz tour. It appeared as though Miley had been previously setting herself up for no more than ridicule, leaving us all scratching our heads in dismay, wondering if she was aiming to set fire to a potentially volatile career. But all it took was this one video to surface on the Internet to remind us that there’s a reason she’s doing all of this: she’s a damn good singer who does have some musical inclinations beyond singing while sticking out her tongue and grabbing her crotch. She’s a bonafide country girl at heart — look no further than this duet of "Jolene" with her god mother Dolly Parton, who has publicly defended Miley, by saying that she's "just trying to find her own place."

Perhaps this quieter moment of artistry in the midst of an otherwise loud, banging (literally, it is called Bangerz) tour, in which she wears a long T-Shirt as opposed to a sparkly unitard, is indicative of the fact that she’s like all of us in our early twenties, except exhibiting it as a macrocosm. She's in the public eye and has the symptoms of one's early twenties, but multiplied — then photographed, put on the Internet, leaving bloggers (like myself) with ample material and opportunities for us to shake our heads and crack wise.

But maybe this video is proof that Bangerz is a public display of what we experience more internally; maybe it's akin to a typical twentysomething's walk of shame in ripped tights, and “Hey Ya” is the afternoon on the couch binge watching Girls, eating potato chips, and writing in a journal.

I’m probably overly optimistic here, and potentially waxing a little too philosophically for what may just be a girl singing a song she likes, but for now, just enjoy this cover and feel the twinge of hope that there’s still artistry in Miley!