Miley Cyrus, who just released a new song “Used To Be Young,” is reflecting on a tense moment between herself and the late Sinéad O’Connor. On the 10th anniversary of her 2013 song and video “Wrecking Ball,” where a then-20-year-old Cyrus appeared nude, the singer looked back on an open letter O’Connor wrote, which included criticism that Cyrus wasn’t “caring” for herself. “You are worth more than your body or your sexual appeal,” O’Connor wrote.
In response to the open letter, in 2013 Cyrus shared a screenshot of tweets O’Connor had written when she was in a fragile mental state. Cyrus compared O’Connor to Amanda Bynes, who had also been struggling with her mental health in a public forum (“Before Amanda Bynes…. There was….”). O’Connor chastised at the time: “You have posted today tweets of mine which are two years old, which were posted by me when I was unwell and seeking help so as to make them look like they are recent… In doing so you mock myself and Amanda Bynes for having suffered with mental health issues and for having sought help. I mean really… who advises you?”
Opening up to ABC, Cyrus reflected on her age at the time and the unique triggers she’d been dealing with: “I think I’d just been judged for so long for my own choices that I was just exhausted, and I was in this place where I finally was making my own choices and my own decisions, and to have that taken away from me deeply upset me..” The full quote is below.
I was expecting there to be controversy and backlash, but I don’t think I expected other women to put me down or turn on me, especially women that had been in my position before. This is when I’d received an open letter from Sinead O’Connor, and I had no idea about the fragile mental state that she was in, and I was also only 20 years old, so I could really only wrap my head around mental illness so much. All that I saw was that another woman had told me that this idea was not my idea.
Our younger childhood triggers and traumas come up in weird and odd ways, and I think I’d just been judged for so long for my own choices that I was just exhausted, and I was in this place where I finally was making my own choices and my own decisions, and to have that taken away from me deeply upset me. God bless Sinead O’Connor, for real, in all seriousness.
Watch Cyrus look back on the moment below.
