The fans started to arrive three days early, camping on the sidewalk on Tuesday to make sure they would be close to Miley Cyrus when she played Rockefeller Plaza on Friday. By the morning of the performance, the plaza was overflowing with screaming fans, and for the first time in the history of TODAY’s concert series, police blocked off 48th Street of all traffic just to accommodate the hordes.
Maybe that’s why Cyrus answered as she did when TODAY’s David Gregory asked her between songs: “What inspires you?”
The 15-year-old gestured to her adoring fans. “They do,” she said. “They inspire me.”
The teen sensation went on: “It’s not just kids my age and older; its kids that are 7, 8 and sometimes younger, and the fact that they’re growing up with music that they can listen to and enjoy and hopefully inspire them. I just want the kids to understand the music.”
During the winter, Cyrus had packed kids into arenas across the country for a series of Hannah Montana concerts. This time, however, she was appearing not as her TV character on the popular Disney Channel series, but as herself: Miley Cyrus, songwriter and singer, plugging her new album, “Breakout.”
“It just excites me that people are still lining up just as much as they were for my character,” Cyrus told Gregory, who confessed that even he watches “Hannah Montana” with his kids. “Here, I don’t even have the support of a show, it’s just the music. The kids understand me and they understand the art of it.”
7 things about Miley
In a bow to Cyrus’ latest song, “7 Things,” Gregory asked the daughter of country star Billy Ray Cyrus to answer seven questions about herself. “Favorite song?” he started off.
“My favorite song? If I would do mine, it’s ‘Bottom of the Ocean.’ ” Fittingly, Cyrus performed the song on the plaza only moments later.
“What’s your favorite concert?” Gregory went on.
Cyrus didn’t hesitate. “It’s Coldplay,” she answered, naming the British band that had packed the plaza for TODAY only a few weeks earlier. “They’re awesome.”
“Your first crush?”
Cyrus looked a little stumped on that one, but finally said, “Like a Backstreet Boy, or probably an ’N Sync member — probably one of those bands.”
“Your favorite memory?”
“Probably being on tour with my dad when I was little.”
“The most expensive item you bought with your own money for love?”
“My mom,” Cyrus said triumphantly, pointing to her mother in the crowd. “Her computer.”
“What do you look for in a boy?” Gregory asked.
“I think someone that is more than just like a boyfriend, someone you can connect with as a friend, get along with,” she said. “I think most girls, and especially me being on the road so much, I just need someone I can call and I can talk to.”
The final question: “You ideal date?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a smile and shrug that seemed to say, “Hey, I’m only 15. Check back in a few years.”
Cyrus and her crew hadn’t arrived in New York for the concert until after midnight. She said she’s had maybe an hour’s sleep before getting up to come to the plaza at 4:30 a.m. to do a sound check.
But at 15, Cyrus is already a seasoned trouper. She didn’t show any signs of fatigue, belting out her songs and dancing through the numbers to the accompaniment of the ecstatic screams of hordes of teens, tweens, and even younger girls and boys.