Miley Cyrus Trashes Her Attention-Grabbing ‘Wrecking Ball’ Music Video: ‘I’ll Never Live That Down’
Despite using it to crash her way further into the pop culture mainstream, songstress Miley Cyrus is now distancing herself from the music video for her 2013 hit, “Wrecking Ball.”
Writers for the New York Daily News state the 24-year-old former Disney kid appeared on The Zack Sang Show Wednesday to promote her latest offering; the country-tinged “Malibu,” when she was asked by Sang to participate in a makeshift version of “Marry, Eff, Kill” that centered on three of her past singles: The aforementioned “Wrecking Ball,” fellow ballad “The Climb,” and the pop-rock “7 Things.”
“[I’d probably] marry ‘The Climb’ because it still has a message I’m down with,” Cyrus expressed.
“Kill,” she continued, “would be ‘Wrecking Ball.'”
After a chuckle from Sang and his radio crew, Cyrus explained that the Terry Richardson-directed video for “Wrecking Ball” — which featured a nude Miley literally riding and grinding the piece of destructive construction equipment throughout the clip — now embarrasses her to the point of disbelief.
“That’s something you can’t take away,” Cyrus surmised to Sang.
“Swinging around naked on a wrecking ball lives forever. Once you do that in the mass that I did, it [lasts] forever. I’m never living that down. I will always be the naked girl on a wrecking ball. No matter how much I just frolic with emus, I’m always [going to be] the naked girl.”
Miley also bemoaned over another infamous scene in “Wrecking Ball,” where she slides her tongue across the mallet side of a sledgehammer.
“I just licked it [without] thinking [about] how long that was going to follow me around,” Cyrus now says of the spectacle.
“That’s my worst nightmare: That being played at my funeral.”
Cyrus, by her own admission, felt a bit differently about the “Wrecking Ball” clip following its release in September of 2013.
“The video is much more [than me being] naked,” Miley said at the time, as MTV News detailed, “and you actually look at me you can tell that I actually look more broken then even the song sounds.”
Filming the video was no easy chore either, according to Cyrus, who had to channel some heavy emotions on-set to effectively translate the sad nature of the song, to visual form.
“If people can take their minds out of the obvious and go into their imagination a little bit, [they’ll] see what the video really means and the way it’s so vulnerable,” Miley shared.
“[In the ‘Wrecking Ball’ video], I look more sad then my voice sounds on the record [because] it was a lot harder to do the video then it was to record the song. It was much more of an emotional experience.”
Miley also went on record with Billboard in 2013 to definitively state that people were seeing Cyrus for who she really was with videos like “Wrecking Ball.”
“I feel like I can really be myself [now],” a proud Cyrus told the music publication.
“I really have more of a connection of who I am, and I feel like I can maybe express that more in my music now.”
Miley’s updated feelings on “Wrecking Ball,” coincidentally, come less than a month after Cyrus’ first pulled an about-face with Billboard in May of this year with her attachment to Bangerz, the hip-hop influenced LP that features “Wrecking Ball” on its track listing.
“At this point in my life, I am expanding personally/musically and gravitating more towards uplifting, conscious rap,” Miley later wrote in an Instagram post to clarify her intent with the Billboard piece earlier in May.
“As I get older I understand the effect music has on the world [and] seeing where we are today, I feel the younger generation needs to hear positive powerful lyrics!”
In an interesting aside, the musician went on to attach her prior “wild child” antics to the experimental follow-up to Bangerz, 2015’s Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, while talking to Billboard.
To date, Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” music video has garnered an astounding 883 million views on YouTube.
[Featured Image by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images]
