Miley Cyrus Sings Lana Del Rey’s ‘Summertime Sadness’
Miley Cyrus recently stopped by BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge, where she performed a heartfelt acoustic version of her hit ballad “Wrecking Ball.” While she was there, the singer, who wore a black turtleneck – as opposed to, you know, nothing – sang her rendition of Lana Del Rey’s hit “Summertime Sadness,” again with acoustic guitars, a percussion box and a couple of backup singers. She closed her eyes and gave the song a little country twang on sultry Del Rey lines like “real big beauty queen style” and the wailing “sadness” bits at the end of the song, and she really went off on the bridge, “I think I’ll miss you forever.”
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But where Del Rey’s voice sounded suitably morose on the original version, Cyrus handled the song with a unique confidence that still sounds depressed, but in a maybe less hopeless way. Overall, it’s a different kind of raw and naked performance than we usually get from the singer.
In more typical Cyrus news, the singer recently appeared naked (and covered in glitter) in the video for Future’s latest single, “Real and True,” on which she sings. She also whipped out a joint and twerked with a dwarf at the MTV European Music Awards in Amsterdam. She’ll likely not be doing either of those things on her upcoming U.S. tour, which kicks off in February. On that trek, she’ll be supporting her album Bangerz, which debuted at Number One on the Billboard chart in October.