Miley Cyrus and Grimes both admitted that despite their successful music careers, they don’t enjoy being on the road. touring.
“Having every day the relationship between you and other humans being subject and observer isn’t healthy for me, because it erases my humanity and my connection,” Cyrus, 31, explained via TikTok on Sunday, August 27. “And without my humanity and my connection I can’t be a songwriter, which is my priority.”
Cyrus received support from Grimes. “If u Exist entirely for the pleasure of others there is nothing left of you,” Grimes, 35, shared via X (formerly known as Twitter) on Monday, August 28. “It’s so hard to express this without feeling ungrateful but if you are an introvert I have no idea how to ever approach tour again, but I feel so guilty about it.”
Grimes, whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher, deleted her post but kept the original video of Cyrus explaining her stance on her feed.
In the video, part of Cyrus’ “We Used to Be Young” series which takes a look back at her life, the former Disney Channel star explained how touring is more than just playing the show every night.
“Traveling as a cheerleader really set me up for touring,” she shared. “Like, the show or the competition may only be a day — and that’s what people don’t really understand about touring is the show is only 90 minutes, but that’s your life.”
Cyrus continued, “If you’re performing at a certain level of intensity and excellence, there should be an equal amount of recovery and rest. There’s a level of ego that has to play a part that I feel get’s overused when I’m on tour and once that switch is on, it’s hard to turn it off. And I think when you’re training your ego every single night to be active, that’s the hardest switch for me to turn off.”
The “Flowers” singer went on to joke about the surprising way touring affects the body. “You ever seen a girl that been on tour for two years? They come back with facial hair, I’m telling you,” she quipped. “I’ll tell you right now, I got dermaplaned when I was on [the] Bangerz [tour].”
Earlier this year, Cyrus told British Vogue that she wasn’t going to do any more arena tours.
“After the last [headline arena] show I did [in 2014], I kind of looked at it as more of a question. And I can’t,” she told the magazine in May. “Not only can’t, because can’t is your capability, but my desire. Do I want to live my life for anyone else’s pleasure or fulfillment other than my own?”
She added, “Like singing for hundreds of thousands of people isn’t really the thing that I love. “There’s no connection. There’s no safety. It’s also not natural. It’s so isolating because if you’re in front of 100,000 people then you are alone.”
