Last night at Lollapalooza, Miley Cyrus opened her set with a performance of her song “We Can’t Stop,” which she transformed into a medley with classic Pixies song “Where Is My Mind.” This performance is the latest in the singer’s repertoire of rock covers in recent memory.
The first half of the song is a straightforward guitar-driven performance of Cyrus’ 2013 hit. About three minutes into the song, during the bridge, the iconic main guitar refrain from “Where Is My Mind” creeps in under Cyrus as she chants her lyrics, “It’s our song, we can sing if we want to, it’s my mouth, I’ll say what I want to!” The band then seamlessly transitions into the instrumental to the Pixies tune, followed by Cyrus singing the lyrics. She continued through the first two verses and choruses to “Where Is My Mind” until transitioning back into “We Can’t Stop” to finish off the performance.
The “Where Is My Mind” section of the medley is mostly faithful to the original version by Pixies. The backing band emulates the original performance precisely, however Cyrus does deliver the lyrics with a bit more of a snarl compared to Black Francis’ studio performance. The most notable omission is the lack of the higher-pitched vocal motif that plays throughout the verses in the original.
“Where Is My Mind” wasn’t the only cover Cyrus pulled out last night during her set at Lollapalooza. She also gave performances of Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass,” Cher’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” Temple Of The Dog’s “Say Hello 2 Heaven,” Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Billy Idol’s “White Wedding,” which she sang with Idol himself.
Cyrus went all out last night during her set, as this year’s Lollapalooza, which was given the green light by the city of Chicago in May, is the first truly major-scale American music festival to take place since the pandemic began last spring.On July 4, she performed cover of the Cocteau Twins’ “Heaven Or Las Vegas” in Las Vegas. In February, at a pre-Super Bowl party, she performed several cover versions of songs by Nine Inch Nails, Bikini Kill, Blondie and Dolly Parton. She also has contributed cover version of the Metallica classic “Nothing Else Matters” to their upcoming 30th anniversary 53-track covers album, The Metallica Blacklist, which features several cover versions of every song from their iconic Black Album.
Cyrus’ cover of “Where Is My Mind” wasn’t the only cover of the song from this week, as members of Touché Amoré, Vein.Fm, Pup and more performed a hardcore version of the song on the talk show Two Minutes to Late Night. Pixies, meanwhile, are set for an American tour this fall starting Sept. 10 in Port Chester, NY.
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