What about the song writing that's sold millions of albums? For a 16 year old that's reasonably impressive no?

But then does the impressiveness rest with the Disney Marketing Machine for Hannah Montana. In part it seems like she would be replaceable (or at least - another could havew been picked) with probably no detriment to the result.

The same doesn't work for Tiger Woods or Bill Gates.

> In part it seems like she would be replaceable (or at least - another could havew been picked) with probably no detriment to the result.

Disney doesn't think so - she turned the role down and Disney put the show on hold for over a year while they tried to convince her to do it.

While there's no doubt that that show wouldn't have been nearly as popular without Disney pushing it, it doesn't follow that any cute kid would have been as successful given the Disney push. Disney is constantly pushing kids and only a few make it big.

If you're better than Disney at picking child stars, big bucks await.

Are you kidding? Disney very frequently makes kids this huge. When the kid's a singer/actress, especially so: they've done a good job of marketing her in both directions.

If you write a show entirely around one person, then yeah. You'll put the show on hold to wait for them. That doesn't mean she's particularly brilliant. Just that she's not entirely awful.

> Are you kidding? Disney very frequently makes kids this huge.

"Very frequently"? I don't see enough "kids this huge" to justify "frequently".

And they didn't write the show for Cyrus. They created the show and she auditioned. They offered. She declined. They waited.

If Disney can create hits at will, why don't they?

Instead, they ride the hits that they have. They try a lot of things. When something works small, they go bigger. If it still works, they hit the gas.

Like I said, if you can do better, big bucks await.

Here's the thing: talented song writing very rarely matters in terms of sales. There've been a ton of studies that look at how songs become popular. To some degree it's a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

If Miley Cyrus wasn't part of the Disney machine, she would not have sold millions of albums. She probably would not have gotten a record deal with anybody but Disney. If she did, she'd fizzle out pretty quickly. I've listened to her stuff: it's incredibly bland.

Yeah, props to her for actually releasing an album at 16 - though, again, with Billy Ray Cyrus as a father and Disney as a corporate overlord that's far less impressive than her doing it with no roots at all. But don't mistake that for songwriting talent in the larger sense. Look at the history of young songwriters who made an impact in the past, and you'll see there's a radical difference. They innovated. They made something new. Miley is just recycling old things.

As I said: it's totally fine that you like her. She seems like a sweet and nice girl, unlike, say, Katy Perry, who's worse and more calculating. But don't let your like for something elevate it above what it actually is, which in her case is pretty bland pop music.