Bloggerific Resume

One of the decisions she’s made and we’ve supported is her taste in music. Now, to be fair, we heavily influenced her preferences from a very early age. Instead of stars that twinkle, cows who poll-vault celestial bodies and boys who run through town in their nightshirts, she listened to what we listened to. Phish was probably the band heard most in our home. While their lyrics in songs like “Contact” (the tires are the things on the car that make contact with the road) and “Opossum” (the road is your end, and your end is the road) are as equally silly as nursery rhymes, the musical complexity of these jams rival the classical musicians that were being marketed to children at the time. She was exposed to good music.

So here we are nine years later and her playlists include Johnny Cash, that one radio edit from Rage Against the Machine, Waterdeep, The News Boys, and of course, what every nine year old girl has in their CD player, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus.

She snuck that last one in there all on her own. It was her choosing. We had all been sitting around one Saturday while her aunt and uncle were here for a visit and she asked “Mom, can I watch Hannah Montana?”

and being that I hadn’t seen it and hadn’t been too impressed with Disney Channel so far, I said “No.”

and her aunt spoke up, “Why not? I love that show!”

So we did the responsible thing and sat down together and all watched as a family. And we’ve seen every episode ever since. It’s a cute show, it’s punchy and funny and very far from “cutting edge”. It’s entertaining and the kids on the show deliver their lines with fantastic comical precision.

The songs and music performed by Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) is your typical pop music with inspirational lyrics. Songs about making mistakes and getting up to do better. Songs about not getting down on yourself too much, but trying again. Songs about being a pop star on the outside and being “just one of the girls” on the inside. Nothing controversial, nothing objectionable.

As we continued to watch the show and listen to the music along came tidbits, interviews and backstage tours featuring Miley Cyrus and her family, mostly her famous post-mullet father, Billy Ray Cyrus. They seemed above average. Her parents were still married, had other seemingly well adjusted kids and they all got along great.

Miley managed to stay out of tabloids for the most part, and her interviews were playful and funny and very, very innocent.

There were occasions, during this past year, that the idea would creep in. You know, Brittany Spears had a squeaky clean reputation once. She was a teen pop star. Everyone thought her dad was fantastic too. But I would suppress those ideas because you know, you can’t judge one teen pop princess by the actions of another. Can you? Besides, we’d cross that bridge when we got there. She’s only 15, what could possibly go wrong?

What could possibly wrong? Vanity Fair. That’s what could possibly go wrong.

Thank goodness for all those songs she sings about not being perfect and everybody making mistakes, otherwise, I wouldn’t know what to tell my nine year old.

My husband wonders why I think the subject will come up. I’m betting it will. I’m disappointed to say the least and now Miley is going on the record saying she’s “embarrassed” and the photographer,Annie Leibovitz, in her defense, quotes Miley as saying “”It wasn’t in a skanky way … And you can’t say no to Annie. She’s so cute. She gets this puppy dog look and you’re like, ‘O.K.’” (The fact that the photographer is quoting Miley as saying this makes me think she should be hiding her methods of manipulation, not flaunting them).