Miley Cyrus is getting real about the drawbacks of touring, revealing on Good Morning America that she has no “desire” to hit the road again any time soon.
In the interview posted Tuesday (July 15), the pop star opened up about her decision not to promote her new album Something Beautiful with a run of shows. “I do have the physical ability, and I have the opportunities to tour,” she explained on GMA. “I wish I had the desire, but I don’t. I also don’t think that there’s actually an infrastructure that supports artists.”
“The artists like Prince that are not here today that lived such a high-intensity lifestyle out on the road … It’s really hard to maintain sobriety when you’re on the road, which is a really important pillar of stability in my life,” she continued. “It’s really hard to keep mental wellness [on tour]. You have so many thousands of people screaming at you, so dopamine, you’re feeling a lot of love, and then you totally crash at the end of the show. You start thinking that one person loving you’s not enough, it needs to be 10,000, it needs to be 80,000.”
That said, Cyrus clarified that her decision to not tour has nothing to do with being “afraid” of the challenge. “I like to do things I’m afraid of,” she said. “I’ve jumped out of airplanes. I’ve performed for 150,000 people.”
“I stood toe-to-toe with Beyoncé,” she continued, referencing her surprise performance of “II Most Wanted” at a June Cowboy Carter Tour show in Paris. “When you’re standing beside her, you can actually feel her desire and her passion.”
Indeed, not a lot of artists can say they’ve performed alongside Queen Bey, who first tapped Cyrus for Cowboy Carter duet “II Most Wanted” in March. The crowd went crazy when the Hannah Montana alum appeared on stage at Stade de France stadium and started singing with the night’s headliner, with Bey giving her a hug and kiss on the cheek.
“That to me is a win,” Cyrus reflected on the performance. “It’s not a trophy, it’s not something physical that you hold or put on a shelf, but it’s something that I have that’s a true win.”
Despite how much fun she had singing with Beyoncé, Cyrus has been open about her aversion to scheduling a tour of her own. In 2023, she shared a statement with fans about not wanting to tour anymore, writing, “This has nothing to do with a lack of appreciation for the fans & everything to do with I simply don’t want to get ready in a locker room … I just don’t want to sleep on a moving bus.”
And in a May interview with Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe, she said that while she’s sometimes tempted to make tour arrangements, she knows it’s best for her sobriety and vocal health to abstain from road life.
“I’ve learned this about myself over the years,” she said at the time. “The sobriety is like, that’s like my God. I need it, I live for it. I mean that it’s changed my entire life.”
Watch Cyrus’ interview on GMA above.