Of course, the lack of alcohol doesn’t hurt, either. “At the beginning, it was just about this vocal surgery,” the “Can’t Be Tamed” musician told Malkin about cutting back on alcohol and forgoing this year’s 4/20 celebration. But as she started looking into her parents’ pasts, the abandonment her mom felt as an adoptee, the struggles her dad went through after his parents’ divorce, “I did a lot of family history, which has a lot of addiction and mental health challenges,” she explained. “So just going through that and asking, ‘Why am I the way that I am?’ By understanding the past, we understand the present and the future much more clearly. I think therapy is great.”
Not to mention that lucid early mornings and nights free for songwriting do a body—and a pop star’s career—some good. “It’s been really important for me over the last year living a sober lifestyle,” noted the singer, preparing to release her seventh studio album, She Is Miley Cyrus, “because I really wanted to polish up my craft.”