Oh, she’s just being Miley December 19, 2009

When we’re not attempting to appear somewhat ‘hip’ here at Make and Deux, we occasionally do something tragically un-hip. And last Wednesday night, that thing was going to see Miley Cyrus play at The O2 in Dublin.

You mightn’t think that’s too bad, ya know, a bit of craic and all that, but the tickets in fact cost us €92.50 each. Yes, they were ridiculously overpriced and I can’t believe we even considered buying them, but we did, and we went along, AND WE HAD FUN.

We were both actually dreading the gig, considering that it would be full of children under the age of ten and the parents that they had bullied into buying the expensive tickets, but moreso because our seats were separate. Since we had booked them online on our own cards, we’d ended up miraculously in the same row but forty seats apart. However, by luck, there was a free seat beside me so Paula dashed over, thankfully evading The O2 security staff.

The whole thing was a very slick production, with every detail planned to within an inch of its life. During one song, she fell into a pit on the stage and then appeared on screen submerged in water, as if that was what she’d fallen into, when really she was just legging it backstage for a costume change.

The highlight had to be during Fly on the Wall, where she entered on some sort of tractor/cart with her dancers in tow. Ad, towards the end of the song, when she was lifted off stage by wires and suspended above the audience, flying around like a literal fly.

The setlist was a carbon copy of her previous gigs on the Wonder World tour, with all the expected hits like 7 Things, Party in the USA and See You Again included.

There were some odd touches to the show – most notably when Hoedown Throwdown segued into the Black Eyed Peas’ Boom Boom Pow for a dancer solo. A video message from will.i.am appeared on the main screen, Miley shouted “Hey everybody give it up for will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas!” or something to that extent, and once again ran off into the ether. She also forgot the lyrics to Party in the USA at one point, stumbling at the “And the Britney song was on” line.

She doesn’t sound as good live as she does on her albums, but she certainly belts the tunes out and although it got a bit shouty at points, she hit all the right notes for the most part.

The encore consisted of two songs – a huge change in comparison to The Swell Season concert we attended the night before, which had about fifteen – See You Again and The Climb. It was, as encores have now become, completely staged, as if the teenybopper wails of “MILEY! MILEY! MILEY!” (which did drag on for what had to be close to five minutes) had anything to do with her return to the stage.

She had a bit of banter with the crowd, but it was all very predictable stuff like, “You’re the loudest crowd we’ve had all tour!” or “I’m loving Ireland so much, you guys are great!” and such. But that’s to be expected.

All in all, it was the most fun I’ve had in a while. It has to be said, Miley Cyrus puts on a good show, even if it is the product of a marketing machine gone mad.

Sadly, we don’t have any snaps of ourselves with Miley during her shopping spree on Grafton Street, due to us both being in work or elsewhere, but I did get a great picture of Paula with Miley’s mother, Leticia “Tish” Cyrus, on Grafton Street the next day. It did take us a good ten minutes of following her around the street to pluck up the courage to say something to her (Paula: “ARE YOU TISH??”), but she was lovely and is probably the closest we should ever be allowed get to the woman herself.