Miley Cyrus Says She ‘Didn’t Make a Dime’ on the Bangerz Tour: It Was an ‘Investment in Myself’

“I paid for it all to make it exactly what I thought I and the fans deserved,” the superstar said of the 2014 concert

Miley Cyrus on the Bangerz Tour in October 2014. PHOTO: DON ARNOLD/WIREIMAGE

Miley Cyrus admitted just how much she decided to say, “I’ma do my thang,” during her Bangerz era. 

In the latest installment of the pop star’s Used to Be Young TikTok series in which she reflects on her life and career in the spotlight, the singer, 30, opened up about how she fully funded her Bangerz Tour because no one else trusted her vision. 

“The Bangerz Tour was an investment in myself,” the “Flowers” artist said of the 2014 tour in support of her hit, fourth studio album. “I didn’t make a dime on this tour because I wanted the tour to be excellent.” 

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She said in the TikTok, “When everyone kept saying, ‘Why are you doing this? You’re going to do like 100 shows and not going to make any money.’ I said, ‘There’s no one I would rather invest in than myself.’ So I paid for it all to make it exactly what I thought I and the fans deserved.”

The “Midnight Sky” singer explained that few people on her team at the time understood her ideas for the show, which was famously extremely campy and included a surreal, larger-than-life. She shared, “A lot of these ideas were kind of so outlandish that no one really wanted to support me in making these pieces, so I had big puppets, oversized beds, I came out of my own face on my tongue.”

Miley Cyrus on the Bangerz Tour in October 2014. DON ARNOLD/WIREIMAGE

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Cyrus also opened up about the significance behind one of the concepts of the concert that she and her creative director at the time, Diane Martel, came up with. “[Martel] goes, ‘How would you want to end this concert?’ Like, ‘The show is so big, how do you want to end it?’ and I wanted to end it in a Truman Show reference,” the performer shared, referring to the 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey as a man whose life is broadcast as a TV show without him knowing.

She continued, “So I flew out on a giant hot dog, obviously, and I left through all the clouds and the exit sign, the way Jim Carrey does, because I felt like The Truman Show was really a reflection of my life.”

Miley Cyrus on the Bangerz Tour in June 2014. MARCO PIRACCINI\ARCHIVIO MARCO PIRACCINI\MONDADORI VIA GETTY

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Cyrus announced the Used To Be Young series in August along with her latest single of the same name, which is an emotional ballad of her reflecting on her past and how she’s been perceived throughout her career. 

The hitmaker previously got candid on the TikTok show about other moments surrounding the release of her 2013 album Bangerz that caused controversy, including her single “We Can’t Stop” and the “Wrecking Ball” music video. 

Miley Cyrus on the Bangerz Tour. TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY

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“At the time when I 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,” the superstar said, going on to mention criticism she received from the late Irish artist Sinead O’Connor. “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.”

Cyrus has also gotten candid on the series about even earlier moments in her career, as well as her relationships.

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Last week, the former Disney Channel star spoke about her 2009 Teen Choice Awards performance in which she sang “Party in the U.S.A.” on top of an ice cream cart while holding onto a pole. 

“I had cut ‘Party in the U.S.A.’ and I was doing my first performance for the Teen Choice Awards. My mom was like, ‘I think it’d be really cool if she was in the trailer park, that’s where we really do come from,’” the recording artist reflected.

In response to the controversy that was sparked by the then-17-year-old holding onto a pole during the performance, Cyrus said, “It wasn’t a stripper pole, it was actually just for stability. I had a heel on! Like what did you want from me?”