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Joe Rogan Podcast: #1531 with Miley Cyrus (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of American singer, songwriter, and actress Miley Cyrus’ interview on The Joe Rogan Experience #1531, September 2, 2020.

Brief Notes: Miley Cyrus joins Joe Rogan for a raw, in-depth conversation about fame, identity, and growing up in the spotlight. In this episode, she opens up about her vocal surgery, going sober, and how years of touring and partying changed her voice and her life. Miley also talks candidly about divorce, media narratives, mental health, and her ideas for realistic children’s books that address drugs, equality, and the tough realities of life.

Introduction

JOE ROGAN: Hello, Miley Cyrus.

MILEY CYRUS: Hello.

JOE ROGAN: How are you?

MILEY CYRUS: I’m good, Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Pleasure to meet you.

MILEY CYRUS: You also. I’m happy to be here.

JOE ROGAN: I’m happy to have you here. Thanks. You have a fantastic voice. Not just a singing voice, but your talking voice. Very unusual. It’s like, it makes you step back.

MILEY CYRUS: A little. I’ve actually recently, I was walking around in Boston, and I went to a museum, and this older man walked up to me, had no idea who I was. He was just enjoying the art also in the museum, and started talking to me forever about my voice. And then there was a college, some sort of trip to the museum, and then everybody started freaking out.

And it was so cool just to have someone stop me about my speaking voice, because that had never happened to me before, I think, because I was turned around and I had the mullet. So I could have been, you know, anybody. I could have been anyone.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a heavy voice.

MILEY CYRUS: It’s a heavy voice.

The Evolution of Her Voice

JOE ROGAN: You didn’t always have a heavy voice, though. My kids love Hannah Montana, by the way.

MILEY CYRUS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So when I would watch, your voice was different.

MILEY CYRUS: It definitely changed. I actually kind of learned a lot about the voice and how our experiences affect our voice. I had a surgery in November on my voice. I had something called Reinke’s edema, which when my doctor told me about it, he said, “No one shy ever has this. This is for abuse of the voice. This is for people that talk way too f*ing much.” And usually this happens when you’re in your 60s or 70s.

JOE ROGAN: How do I not have that?

MILEY CYRUS: I don’t know. I don’t know. Mine, I think, honestly, really, I started touring, you know, at probably 12 or 13. And not only was I… the adrenaline that you have after a show, it’s not really the singing that affects your voice as much. It’s afterwards, you’re totally on. And then it’s really hard to get that sleep.

You stay up talking all later, they’re talking all night, turned into smoking all night. And now this is kind of where we’re at. We got some dirt on her. You know, the voice can be like a face. It collects wrinkles, and it tells a story. If you look at yourself and you go, “Oh, I didn’t have this until this trip. You know, I sat out in the sun or I partied too much or whatever,” your voice is the same thing.

JOE ROGAN: It collects dirt. It’s very distinctive.

MILEY CYRUS: Yeah. Yes. It gives me away. I mean, I’m pretty much one of the only chicks in LA with a mullet, so that gives me away also.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you’re not in the right neighborhood.

MILEY CYRUS: There’s plenty of… I know. I got to drive out to the desert, I guess.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Go out to Joshua Tree. Find the chicks that are tripping.

MILEY CYRUS: Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. With handmade tattoos.

MILEY CYRUS: I had a couple of those, too.

JOE ROGAN: But there’s something very distinctive about a voice you earned, you know.

Aging, Scars, and the Industry

MILEY CYRUS: It’s true. It’s kind of like, you know, when you see somebody… and I think, especially being a female in the industry, I think growing up and changing and kind of… that there is such a kind of stigma with aging. It’s a very kind of scary thing as a female in the industry.

And I thought about it a lot and thought about my voice. I actually had someone when I was doing an interview a couple months ago said, “You know, she sounds like she stayed up all night smoking too many darts.” And I said, “Well, I f*ing have.” And that’s just the truth. And if, you know, that was anyone else, you know, it’s kind of like you’re weathered or you’re aged or you’ve been through it.

And, you know, we’ll talk about it as we go. But over the last year, I noticed a really big change in my voice, kind of a heaviness to it, and I experienced some heavy things. And so I feel like it is a reflection. It is kind of a scar, in a sense. But also, just by having the surgery was kind of a gift also, because I was able to understand my instrument.

No one ever explained that to me. You know, I sat in a room with the piano and did scales and shit, but no one taught me about how do you have longevity? You know, you are in here with athletes all the time. And recovery days are the most important days. I didn’t get recovery days. That was not important for someone that was making so much capital for such a big corporation.

You know, the off days are days that money’s not coming in. And I definitely probably didn’t get the training that I needed to say, “Hey, you know what? I don’t want to do this till I’m 15.