Starting out her career starring as Hannah Montana on Disney Channel, Cyrus has been deeply involved with the music industry since her early teens, having recorded 97 songs as of 2020. But, how many of those songs has she written?
Miley Cyrus, real name Destiny Hope Cyrus, has co-written a total of 78 songs in her solo career. On top of that, there are 10 songs she’s released that were written solely by her as part of her 2015 album, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.
Continue reading to discover Miley’s early career and songs, including exactly which songs she’s had a hand in writing.
Co-Writing Her Early Songs
Coming off the back of her massive success on Hannah Montana, Miley branched away from the TV character. She had recorded countless songs for the series and film adaptation, but was now looking to transition and release tracks as a professional artist.
In June 2007, Cyrus dropped Meet Miley Cyrus, her debut album. It was a two-disc album, the first disc with songs as artist Hannah Montana, and the second as herself.
It ended up flying to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts in the US, and sold more than three million copies over the coming years.
Within this debut album, Cyrus co-wrote 6 of the songs – these were the first songs she recorded that she had a contribution to, unlike most of the tracks when she was singing as Hannah Montana.
Some of these songs were “As I Am”, co-written with Shelly Peiken and Xandy Barry, “Good and Broken” with Antonina Armato and Tim James, and one of her bigger hits “See You Again” with Tim James and again Antonina Armato.
She did a rendition of “See You Again” in 2017 which you can see below:
Her second studio album, Breakout, hit the scenes in 2008 and was also a big success. On that album she co-wrote 8 songs, including “7 Things” which peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
On her subsequent EP, The Time of Our Lives, which came out in 2009, Miley didn’t write or co-write any of the songs. Her third studio album, Can’t Be Tamed, was published in 2010, and she was a co-author for 10 of those songs – the most she’d done on an album yet.
Bangerz album came along in 2013, and Miley continued to write with others.
She co-authored two of her most widespread successes, “We Can’t Stop” and “Wrecking Ball”, which both peaked at No. 1 and No 2 in several countries.
Writing More on Her Own
While she had regularly recorded and published songs that she had written with others, it wasn’t until the release of her fifth studio album, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz in 2015 that she composed more tracks on her own
Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz was part of an independent release that she made free on streaming service SoundCloud.
She wrote 10 songs on the album, which included “Pablow the Blowfish”, “Twinkle Song” and “I Get So Scared.”
Seeing as this was one of her first opportunities to speak freely on sensitive subjects, it makes sense that this was the first time we were seeing Miley as a solo-writer on her albums.
She spoke more about the making of the album to The New York Times in 2015, stating, “I can just do what I want to do, and make the music I want to make.”
Speaking on the stark difference between the 2015 album and her previous release Bangerz, Miley said, “When I made ‘Bangerz,’ it was as true to me then as this record is now,” adding, “it just happened naturally in my head. It’s like anything — styles just change.”
In 2017, her album Younger Now had 11 tracks, and she put pen to paper on all of them.