Miley Cyrus reveals her rare medical vocal disorder: “My voice is super unique because of it”

Apart from a handful of sporadic brief television performances, it’s been a couple of years since we’ve seen Miley Cyrus on stage performing a full live set. The singer’s last full-blown show was in LA in Match 2023 and the last time she went on the road extensively was for the Bangerz Tour in 2014.

New Miley Cyrus album hits stores

And even with the release of her new album: Something Beautiful, which came out on Colombia this month, Miley has no plans to be heading out to promote it - at least now for now and any future shows will likely be on a much smaller scale than before.

That might come as a disappointment for fans who want to see her live but the decision to cut back on performing is down to medical reasons, rather than not wanting to - far from it, as she herself explained to Zane Lowe on his Apple Music show.

“The physicality of what I’m doing. The athleticism, the chemicals in your body that are being produced when you’re at that level of high stress. And so, working from the inside out, there would have to be, y’know, I have certain protocols that keep me… again, we talked about the sobriety. That’s super important to me. So part of that is keeping myself mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally well, and I want to emphasize the physically because of how taxing a physical live performance is.

“So I had the Reinke’s Edema, which is something that is called, it’s abuse of the vocal cords. And being 21 and staying up and drinking and smoking and partying after every show does not help. But also in my case, it does not cause it. So my voice always sounded like this - it’s a part of my unique anatomy, this very large polyp on my vocal cord which is giving me a lot of the tone and the texture of making me who I am“.

Miley Cyrus on dealing with “ultimate vocal fry”

The singer stressed that she has to rest her voice, which is why touring is not an option: “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...’ And that’s how you know I’m really tired because it creates that ultimate vocal fry,” she continued. “It’s super unique because of it but I do have this Reinke’s Edema, this large polyp on my cords and I’m not willing to sever it, because the chance of waking up from surgery and not sounding like myself is a probability”.

So there you have it. Miley has opened up for the first time about something “really private and really precious, but it is a real thing”. And if things were different, she’d be on the road already.

“I put a tour together every other week because I want to do it - but, it would have to be in a way that is sustainable for me. I don’t lip-sync, I sing live and these songs are big, it’s strenuous. I’m singing [some songs] with a 16-year-old voice compared to a 33-year-old voice... It’s not free to tour and so if I can’t play a certain amount of shows, it doesn’t mathematically make sense to do it. It why a lot of artists don’t tour as much as they maybe want to or used to," she ended.

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