Miley Cyrus reflects on feud with late Sinead O'Connor while paying tribute to the 'wonder woman'

Miley Cyrus has been a significant part of the entertainment industry ever since she was a teenager. Right from playing Hannah Montana to releasing the video of Wrecking Ball, the singer came a long way. She has unapologetically been herself, made mistakes, owned them and has grown into her own. On 24th August 2023, on her ABC special, “Endless Summer Vacation: Continued (Backyard Sessions), the singer spoke about one such interaction between her and Sinead O'Connor.

Back in 2013, when Cyrus released her video of "Wrecking Ball," she never anticipated the backlash she received. While there was a lot of controversy around it, the song did do super well. She also told Rolling Stone that her popular and highly sexualized video for the track was a “modern version” of O’Connor's signature song, “Nothing Compares 2 U."

However, that somehow offended O’Connor and she did not attempt to hide it either. She went ahead and wrote an open letter to Miley on her blog that said, "I am 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. It is in fact the case that you will obscure your talent by allowing yourself to be pimped, whether it’s the music business or yourself doing the pimping.”

Given that Miley's Wrecking Ball was inspired by O'Connor's work, the singer was hurt. Miley took a stand for herself and chose to retaliate via a tweet that said, “Sinead. I don’t have time to write you an open letter cause I’m hosting & performing on SNL (U.S. comedy show Saturday Night Live) this week." It referred to Sinead's infamous incident where she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s. In fact, that is also the reason why the Irish singer got exiled from the music industry.

In her ABC Special, she said, “At the time when I had made ‘Wrecking Ball,’ I was expecting for 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.”

However, all things said and done, on account of the Irish Singer's recent death, Miley spoke about how she can now look at her feud with O'Connor with a renewed understanding. She said that she didn't know about O'Connor's mental health struggle.

She said, “So this is when I received an open letter from Sinead O’Connor and I had no idea about the fragile mental state that she was at. And I was also only 20 years old, so I couldn’t really wrap my head around mental illness so much. All that I saw was that another woman had told me that this idea was not my idea, and even if I was convinced that it was, it was still just men in power’s idea of me and they had manipulated me to believe that it was my own idea when it never really was. And it was. And it is. And I still love it.”

She further added, "And it was and it is, and I still love it. Our younger childhood triggers and traumas come up in weird and odd ways. And I think I’ve 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 in my own decision, and to have that taken away from me deeply upset me. God bless Sinead O’Connor, for real in all seriousness.”

On 25th August 2023, 10 years to the day after the "Wrecking Ball" video came out, Miley released her new single called, "Used To Be Young." She admitted that O'Connor's response caught her off-guard and took place at a weird time in Miley's own life as well. It was a time when she felt like so many people were out to get her. All things said and done, she also performed her song "Wonder Woman," which she dedicated to Sinead.