Miley Cyrus Opens Up About Painful Medical Emergency on Live TV, ‘Unique Anatomy’ Behind Signature Sound

The singer also opened up about a different medical emergency she suffered on live TV, as well as her sobriety, how winning Grammy gold helped her heal, Harrison Ford’s unlikely influence on Something Beautiful, and a whole lot more in a wide-ranging interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe.

In the chat, Cyrus gave “Flowers” to those newer artists who are fearlessly forging their own unique paths as young women in the same way Cyrus did following her Disney years. In particular, she said she was blown away by both Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, who took the stage for their Grammy debuts earlier this year.

Calling herself “big fans” of both artists, Cyrus said, “I thought Sabrina and Chappell both at the Grammys this year, it was over the top pro singing. I’m just big fans and I just support those girls all the way.”

Knowing first-hand the kind of stress and anxiety performing live on a stage of that magnitude can produce, she added, “I know that both of them were probably choking on their heart because it’s so much pressure, and they just nailed it.”

She was also grateful that she got to grow up in a slightly different era, saying she wishes “people would not give her a hard time,” referring to Roan’s lamentations about being brutally attacked across social media.

“It’s probably really hard coming into this business with phones and Instagram. That wasn’t always a part of my life, and I’m not a part of it now; I don’t even have my Instagram password,” Cyrus said.

Even without that extra layer of scrutiny, Cyrus’ rocky transition from child star into adult pop icon certainly came with plenty of awkward and uncomfortable moments that the paparazzi and tabloids covered extensively.

Polyp Star

While some might attribute Cyrus’ lower, husky register to those wild partying days of her youth, the singer made it clear there’s more going on than just that — though she does admit her “Used to Be Young” days may be a contributing factor.

“I had the Reinke’s edema, which is something that is called, it’s abuse of the vocal cords,” Cyrus explained of the condition which is often attributed to long-term smokers. But, as longtime Miley fans know, she’s had this sound dating all the way back to her Hannah Montana days.

“Being 21 and staying up and drinking and smoking and partying after every show does not help,” she explained of her unique voice. “But also in my case, it does not cause it.”

“My voice always sounded like this,” Cyrus said, revealing that it’s actually a unique medical situation that appears to be at the root of her smokey sound. “So I have this very large polyp on my vocal cord, which has given me a lot of the tone and the texture that has made me who I am.”

She went on to add that it’s not always a blessing, though. “It’s extremely difficult to perform with because it’s like running a marathon with ankle weights on,” Cyrus explained. “So even when I’m talking sometimes, at the end of the day I’ll call my mom and she’ll go, ‘Oh, you sound like you’re talking through a radio.'”

While she thinks her condition is a “blessing,” Cyrus joked that it makes it impossible for her to go incognito anywhere — if she opens her mouth.

Surgery is an option to sever the polyp, but Cyrus said she’s not quite willing to go there “because the chance of waking up from a surgery and not sounding like myself is a probability.”

Vocal struggles due to her medical situation is something Cyrus has learned to live with, and even come to appreciate as it’s helped her carve a unique niche as an artist. But another medical situation was totally unwelcome, and much harder to power through … on live TV, no less.

New Year’s Rupture

For a couple of years earlier in this decade, Cyrus was starting to create a new niche for herself, as a New Year’s Eve host and icon. But in her second year, where she hosted alongside her godmother Dolly Parton, Cyrus revealed she suffered a painful medical crisis on air.

“I had an ovarian cyst rupture,” she said, calling it a “pretty traumatic experience.”

“It was pretty traumatic because it was extremely excruciating and I did the show anyway,” Cyrus said. “But it was really, really hard on me.”

The moment was so severe for Cyrus that she said it led her to consider ending her singing career altogether. She credits a conversation with Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, who also produced her New Year’s Eve shows, with helping her to get through it.

“I had dinner with Lorne and he said something that now has stuck with me,” she said, adding that he’s sat across from countless musicians over the years telling him “they were quitting music.”

“He goes, ‘Six months — everybody has six months to feel sorry for themselves and then we start to rebuild,'” she shared. “‘Everyone does this.'”

After giving herself time to power through her emotional and physical struggles, Cyrus decided to return to music, realizing it was a draw she couldn’t resist. “What I’ve always realized is that it will quit me before I ever quit it,” she said. “That’s not in the cards for me.”

She may not be able to resist the pull of music, but Cyrus has managed to overcome something even more impactful, as she talked about the power of her sobriety, and how much it’s grown to mean to her.

“I’ve learned this about myself over the years: sobriety is, like, that’s like my God,” Cyrus said. “I need it, I live for it,” she added, saying that sobriety has “changed my entire life.”

Cyrus recalled the last time she and Lowe sat down to talk, as it came shortly after she’d fallen off the wagon with her sobriety journey during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020. “I know I needed to fall one more time,” she told him in this latest interview.

She admitted that since their last interview, “there were times [that] hurt, I’m not proud of them. Definitely not my best moments, not some of my best work, any of that.”

“But, it all led me to writing ‘Flowers,’ which then was some sort of key right into the lock of all healing,” she continued. “It healed me so much.”

Now, Cyrus has been fully sober since 2020, after having kicked the marijuana habit for good in 2017.

“Flowers” was as much about the end of her marriage to Liam Hemsworth as her sobriety, in a way marking the end of that more tumultuous chapter of her life. And it was an ending that needed one more step she didn’t anticipate.

“I think somewhere inside of me I needed maybe to hold a trophy and just feel for a moment that I have something that I can hold in my hands that feels like a true achievement,” Cyrus admitted. “Flowers” did win two Grammys last year — her first-ever wins — with Cyrus on hand to receive those trophies.

“Maybe it’s the kid in me. I don’t know what it was, but I needed something to hold that made me feel like I had really won,” she admitted. “And so at the Grammys, that’s why I went. It was actually for healing.”

For reasons she can’t even fathom, she said seeing “Grammy Award-winning artist” in searches of her name is “like a band-aid on a broken heart in some way.” Now that she has that, she said she felt more comfortable saying now “I’m going to go make some of my weird that I like to make.”

One of Miley’s “weird” ideas was how she planned to take her latest project Something Beautiful to the people. Her originally plan was to launch an ambitious and unique tour strategy behind her forthcoming eponymous ninth album, dropping May 30.

She hasn’t faced a live tour in a decade, so she had this idea to perform “in intimate places that are filled with beauty.” That meant avoiding mega-stadiums and massive outdoor venues. Instead, she had an idea for “performing in all the forests and at the pyramids and all these things.”

Around this time, Cyrus said that Harrison Ford actually asked her if she was working on anything, so she pulled out this plan that she had concocted for this unique, intimate musical experience. And totally on brand, Ford started poking holes in it.

“He goes, ‘You really wanna go and set up in a forest, and do what?’ He’s like, ‘You gonna bring a crew?'” Cyrus recalled. “He’s like, ‘Looks expensive.'”

That was all it took for Cyrus to completely step back and reimagine what she was thinking, which instead turned into this new film. Instead of touring, she decided to put the tour in theaters, “because it’s something you can watch night after night after night and you get to discover, and you get a feel like you’re a part of a performance, but I don’t have to tax myself in that way.”

And she wants it in theaters, because that’s a more active and engaged experience than laying on your bed with an album where you “kind of pay attention.”