Review: Miley Cyrus reinvents herself -- again -- on MTV’s ‘Unplugged’

For close to eight months now -- since she released the music video for her song “We Can’t Stop� -- Miley Cyrus has had a look in her eyes that’s proved nearly as transfixing as the other body parts she’s put on public view.

It’s a mixture of determination and desperation, a raw visual expression of how brazenly the former Disney Channel star has remade herself in a hip-hop image but also, it seems, of a creeping fear that her license to appropriate may be revoked at any moment.

Given the degree to which it was promoted in advance as a kind of “hoedown throwdown� (to borrow the title of one of her old Hannah Montana songs), you might’ve expected the anxiety to dissipate for Cyrus’ edition of MTV’s “Unplugged,� which premiered Wednesday.

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“I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but I’m from Nashville,� she told the studio audience shortly after vaulting onstage in a tight red-gingham jumpsuit. “And since I couldn’t make all of you guys go back home with me, I tried to bring Nashville here for tonight.�

Yet if the 21-year-old singer was returning to the safety of her roots, that fear of being found out still flickered across her eyes, even when they were obscured beneath a blond wig evidently intended as an homage to Dolly Parton. For Cyrus, described in a commercial near the end of the hour-long broadcast as “the most talked-about artist on the planet,� the work of reinvention never ends.

That restlessness made for intermittent thrills on “Unplugged,� for which she and a band playing mostly acoustic instruments performed on a stage set to resemble a barnyard, with a giant light-up wagon wheel overhead. (Time will tell whether the arrangements from this show figure into the North American arena tour Cyrus is to launch next month.)

In “4X4� and “#GETITRIGHT,� a pair of already-twangy funk cuts from last year’s “Bangerz� album, her nervous energy gave the music a jittery quality rarely voiced in the ultra-polished pop that dominates Top 40 radio.

“I’ve been laying in this bed all night long / Don’t you think it’s time to get it on?� she sang in “#GETITRIGHT� -- an appealingly petulant come-on from someone caressing a guy in a horse costume, as Cyrus was.

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“Rooting for My Baby� had a similar friction, with the neediness in her voice playing against the dreamy thrum of a song channeling “Rumours�-era Fleetwood Mac. And though she’s likely sung it dozens (if not hundreds) of times over the last year, Cyrus seemed to access a fresh reserve of hurt for “Wrecking Ball�; she rushed the ballad in a way that suggested she hasn’t grown inured to its power.

At other points, though, Cyrus’ reaching felt more like grasping, as in a frantic, tuneless “SMS (Bangerz)� and “Drive,� a dreary piano ballad in which her intensity seemed to lack a specific target. Ditto her cover of Parton’s “Jolene,� which she sang well enough but didn’t endow with any meaning deeper than her respect for country-music show business.

Not that show business can’t provide its own meaning. For Wednesday’s much-hyped closer, Cyrus brought Madonna onstage for an ungainly mash-up of “We Can’t Stop� and Madonna’s “Don’t Tell Me,� two declarations of pop-star intransigence from women who’ve faced plenty of opposition.

And though the song sounded terrible, there was something undeniably exciting about watching the singers continue to say no -- Madonna to those who insist she give it up, Cyrus to those who demand she just be herself.

What’s she like again?

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Twitter: @mikaelwood