Miley Cyrus performs as thousands of revelers gather in New York's Times Square to celebrate the ball drop at the annual New Year's Eve celebration on December 31, 2013 in New York City.
She came, she twerked, she conquered, but the question on everyone’s mind this New Year’s Eve was whether Miley Cyrus could deliver a performance as sensational — and provocative — as her previous appearance on MTV’s Video Music Award.
The odds were stacked against her, with temperatures in New York plunging below freezing and Cyrus tweeting five hours before her performance about a nagging “cough/cold” combo. “If I can just get thru tonight I can have a nice lil break,” Cyrus wrote.
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She took the stage above Times Square in a white fur coat, parted in the middle, revealing that despite the cough/cold combo, she would brave the elements in a shimmering gold crop top/trousers combo.
The performance opened with a slightly pitchy rendition of “#Geitright” and a brief bump-and-grind with a back-up dancer half her height. Then came the showstopping rendition of “Wrecking Ball,” which turned into a sing-a-long with the big crowd. Panning shots of the revelers showed a startling number who knew the lyrics by heart.
Cyrus told the host of the night’s ceremony, Ryan Seacrest, that her outfit that night was “the most clothes I’ve been in in 2013,” and suggested she would have worn much less, if not for the weather. Thus the year of Cyrus ended, not with a bang, but a brrr.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uayc1JKFw8]