Cyrus fans see double

What happened

Teen pop sensation Miley Cyrus, a/k/a Hannah Montana, has been using a body double during her current “Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus ‘Best of Both Worlds’” tour, which features Cyrus performing songs as her television character, Montana, and as herself. A video posted recently on YouTube shows Cyrus being ushered offstage through a trap door during a song, and quickly replaced by a look-alike who finishes the song. “To help speed the transition from Hannah to Miley, there is a production element during the performance of ‘We Got the Party’ incorporating a body double for Miley,” according to a statement released by the public relations firm PMK. (AP)

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

And “given that Cyrus was lip-syncing the whole time” anyway, said Dan Kois and Lane Brown in New York Magazine’s blog Vulture, “it’s not that big of a deal that it was someone else up there lip-syncing for a minute.” But still, “some haters are very, very upset.”

Why shouldn’t they be? said the blog Gabby Babble. “After paying so much to see her, they deserve to see her and not some big bones body double.” If Cyrus really “needed a break, she could have taken one at the end of the song.”

Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus has to have a body double, said Todd Martens in his Los Angeles Times blog Extended Play. Her live show is “all about spectacle,” and is “set up at a pace to mimic a sugar rush.” There is “a sort of gleeful momentum” at “the heart of Cyrus’ success, and a body double is apparently preferable to any slow-done in the show.”