Miley Cyrus Reflects on Sinéad O’Connor “Wrecking Ball” Dispute in New TV Special

In her new special, Endless Summer Vacation: Continued (Backyard Sessions), Miley Cyrus reflects on her 2013 feud with Sinéad O’Connor. The dispute between the artists began after Cyrus told Rolling Stone that her “Wrecking Ball” music video was inspired by O’Connor’s iconic “Nothing Compares 2 U” visual. “I wanted it to be tough but really pretty,” Cyrus said, “that’s what Sinéad did with her hair and everything.”

Shortly after the interview was published, O’Connor wrote an open letter to Cyrus. She wrote to the pop star, who was 20 years old at the time, “I am extremely concerned for you that those around you have led you to believe, or encouraged you in your own belief, that it is in any way ‘cool’ to be naked and licking sledgehammers in your videos. It is in fact the case that you will obscure your talent by allowing yourself to be pimped, whether its the music business or yourself doing the pimping.”

Cyrus responded to O’Connor by posting a screenshot of tweets from the Irish musician, making light of O’Connor’s difficulties with mental health.

In the on-camera interview for the new special, Cyrus said, “At the time when I had made ‘Wrecking Ball,’ I was expecting for there to be controversy and backlash, but I don’t think I expected other women to put me down or turn on me, especially women that had been in my position before.” She continued:

So, this is when I had received an open letter from Sinead O’Connor, and I had no idea about the fragile mental state that she was in, and I was also only 20 years old, so I could really only wrap my head around mental illness so much. And all that I saw was that another woman had told me that this idea was not my idea. And even if I was convinced that it was, it was still just, you know, men in power’s idea of me and they had manipulated me to believe that it was my own idea when it never really was. And it was. And it is. And I still love it.

Our, you know, younger childhood triggers and traumas come up in weird and odd ways, and I think I had just been judged for so long for my own choices that I was just exhausted, and I was in this place where I finally was making my own choices and my own decisions, and to have that taken away from me deeply upset me. God bless Sinead O’Connor, for real, in all seriousness.

Cyrus also dedicated her Endless Summer Vacation: Continued (Backyard Sessions) performance of “Wonder Woman” to O’Connor.

Sinéad O’Connor died in July at the age of 56. Tributes to the singer-songwriter poured out from the music community and beyond.