Hannah Montana: Split personalities look an awful lot alike

Hannah Montana. Seen Thursday night with the Jonas Brothers at Nassau Coliseum.

By J. EDWARD KEYES | Special to Newsday

10:27 PM EST, December 27, 2007

When does a girl become a corporation?

Three years ago, Miley Cyrus was just a 12-year-old with big dreams. These days she sits atop an enterprise; she was recently named one of Forbes' magazine's 20 Richest Stars Under 25 and her current tour, the one that brought her and her alter-ego, Hannah Montana, to Nassau Coliseum Thursday night, is expected to take in upwards of $28 million.

What's more, tickets for the show turned up on resale Web sites for as much as $1,000 apiece.

No concert can justify that kind of price tag, but Cyrus & Co. managed to deliver a show that was the visual and sonic equivalent of washing down a pound of sugar with 27 cans of soda.

At the start of the evening, Cyrus was lowered on to the stage in a box that bore a digital image of her silhouette as pink fireworks exploded behind her. That was as subtle as it got.

Cyrus performed the first half of the evening as Hannah, and the tone was both frantic and brightly hued. For "Pumpin' Up the Party," her backing dancers performed choreographed calisthenics in searing neon outfits.

Yet despite Cyrus' charisma, there's something disingenuous about watching a girl insist, "I'm living the dream/. . . but underneath it all/ I'm just like you" on stage in a sold-out arena. It feels more than a little false -- though it will likely come as relief to parents hoping to charge $1,000 for entrance to their daughter's next recital.

Cyrus emerged as herself for the show's second half, and the tone was markedly different. Instead of descending from above this time she was raised up from below, donning a leather jacket the color of a bruise and strutting with alarming confidence. The songs she performs as Cyrus are darker, too: "Start All Over," with its divebombing chorus and corkscrew guitars, is frighteningly good, and the stomping "East Northumberland High," which Cyrus performed amidst dancers dressed as skateboarders and football players, is like a kiddie Kinks song.

But still, there was something that troubling. On her television show, Montana gets to spend a few hours each day as average teenager Miley Stewart. In real life, normalcy has been eliminated. What's left are two pop stars, Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus, two glittery girls living the dream. Look closely, and it's a bit depressing: a crash course in capitalism for the Crayola set. But who can argue the logic? In this new arrangement, there's twice as much to merchandize.