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Hannah Montana Gave Miley Cyrus an "Identity Crisis"

Hannah Montana Gave Miley Cyrus an “Identity Crisis”

How meta can this get?

Where does Hannah Montana stop and Miley Cyrus start? While that may have been easy to differentiate for viewers (the wig!), Cyrus explained that it started to get difficult for her and that she was losing herself in the role — and in real life. During an appearance on Spotify's Rock This with Allison Hagendorf podcast, Cyrus said that "no one cared" about her when she wasn't playing the character Hannah Montana, and she was starting to lose her own personality because of it.

"The concept of the show is that when you're this character, when you have this alter ego, you're valuable. You've got millions of fans, you're the biggest star in the world," she said. "Then the concept was that when I looked like myself when I didn't have the wig on anymore, no one cared about me. I wasn't a star anymore."

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She added that she'd start to act like Hannah Montana — someone she didn't even create — and would play into the expectations of the role. That, she explained, could account for the whiplash people felt when she came out with Bangerz. It wasn't the Hannah Montana that they were used to, because it was Miley Cyrus.

"I think that's maybe why I almost created a characterized version of myself at times ... I never created a character where it wasn't me, but I was aware of how people saw me and I kind of played into it a little bit," she continued. "Like, when I noticed that people gave a shit that I would stick my tongue out, when they told me, 'Stop sticking your fucking tongue out,' I would do it more ... When people are pissed, that means they care, so that makes you want to do it, too."

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She concluded by saying that it wasn't until 2013 and the release of Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz that she felt comfortable being herself. It's her favorite release, she adds, because she wrote it and produced it herself.

"It's my favorite record that I've made because it was me in my garage producing and writing my own lyrics," she said. "That's when I kind of started really developing, I feel like, as the artist that I am now ... I was just really finding myself super rapidly and just evolving, almost. I had growing pains constantly."