Miley Cyrus reflects on Sinéad O’Connor feud
In a new interview with ABC, Miley Cyrus has reflected on the brief feud between her and recently deceased singer Sinéad O’Connor.
Following the release of the video for Cyrus’ number one hit ‘Wrecking Ball’, O’Connor penned an open letter to Cyrus that was printed in The Guardian. Claiming to be in the “spirit of motherliness and with love”, O’Connor said that she was “extremely concerned for you that those around you have led you to believe, or encouraged you in your own belief, that it is in any way ‘cool’ to be naked and licking sledgehammers in your videos,” after Cyrus compared the ‘Wrecking Ball’ video to O’Connor’s video for ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’.
“You are worth more than your body or your sexual appeal,” O’Connor wrote. “The world of showbiz doesn’t see things that way, they like things to be seen the other way, whether they are magazines who want you on their cover, or whatever … Don’t be under any illusions … ALL of them want you because they’re making money off your youth and your beauty … which they could not do except for the fact your youth makes you blind to the evils of show business. If you have an innocent heart you can’t recognise those who do not.”
Cyrus responded with a series of screenshots containing tweets that O’Connor shared when she was seeking mental help. Cyrus also compared O’Connor to Amanda Bynes, who was going through a similar low in her public persona due to mental health problems at the time. O’Connor responded negatively, but the feud didn’t appear to progress beyond that.
After O’Connor’s death, Cyrus has now looked back on the incident. “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,” Cyrus shared.
“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,” she added. “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,” Cyrus commented. “God bless Sinead O’Connor, for real, in all seriousness.”
Watch the video for ‘Wrecking Ball’ down below.
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