Queens of Royalty, Rock & Raunch - Queen Elizabeth II, Taylor Swift & Miley Cyrus

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What do they have in common?  Other than a few hundred million dollars in net worth not much.  But it is fun to look at these three Queens when they were the same age.

Hannah Montana - Disney look

Miley Cyrus

For example, Miley Cyrus is now 21 years old and she grossed an estimated $78 million in the last year, and that wasn't all she grossed as she grossed out her fans with her free wheeling lifestyle based on getting stoned, getting drunk and getting wild.

Miley is the reincarnation of Madonna as a wild child and Cyrus intends to celebrate herself, her money, her sexuality and whatever else comes along with no interest in being apologetic or anything mature.

Actually Miley started out as a Disney do gooder, the All American teen, before she grew up and decided being provocative paid.  In 2006 at age 14 thanks to Disney Cyrus had an estimated net worth of $3.5 million.

Today it has grown to about $155 million net worth thanks to her on-stage antics, a lot of skin and a tongue that seems to drag on the floor.

    

When Queen Elizabeth was the same age, 21, she had just survived four years of Nazi bombings of London and had been a member of the British Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service.

Elizabeth age 3

On her 21st birthday, the same age as Cyrus today, she was traveling through Africa with her parents and made a radio broadcast back to Britain pledging:

"I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong."

Taylor Swift

Taylor is the heir apparent as Queen of Country music and has not fallen into the same pit of vulgarity and sexuality as Miley though they seem to be friends of some sort.

Swift made her breakthrough at age 16 with her first mega hit "Tim McGraw" and has created a multi-million dollar niche chronicling the life of a typical teen through her music, making her the greatest crossover artist ever from country to pop.

Of course most typical teens didn't earn $18 million by their 18th birthday nor generate about $50 million each the past few years touring while releasing one new album every two years.

Today Taylor continues to earn entertainer of the year awards for her relentless touring schedule, fan availability and All-American image.  At age 25 she is worth an estimated $220 million and has at least four estates worth millions each across the nation.

While Cyrus slithers on her tongue for the fans Taylor hobnobs with American royalty like the Kennedy family boys at her New England estate.  The crazier Miley gets the swifter Swift sets herself apart from her crazy friend.

So what was Queen Elizabeth up to when she was 25 like Taylor?  She was getting married and just two years later, at age 27, she became Queen of England and all the other territories associated with the British crown.

Okay, so how much is the British monarch worth compared to the American kids?  Well, contrary to reports the royal family overspends, the Queen is personally worth about $500 million.  Her properties alone generate about $79 million dollars per year, about what they cost to operate a year.

And her net worth does not count the Crown Estate trust for the British royalty consisting of real estate property, art work and other stuff worth BILLIONS of pounds, dollars, any way you want to count it, way more than 15 billions of dollars.

Soooo...

Before reaching the age of 21 Miley Cyrus was a multi-millionaire Disney television star and Taylor Swift was a multi-millionaire heart beat and heart throb of country and pop music. At the same age Queen Elizabeth was dodging Nazi bombs that were destroying London having refused to leave England and demanding to stay with her parents, the King and Queen.

At age 21 Miley Cyrus slithers on her tongue while Queen Elizabeth pledged her loyalty to the people of Britain and at age 25 Taylor Swift travels the world singing and buying mansions while Queen Elizabeth was getting married and two years away from becoming Queen of Britain.

Today Queen Elizabeth is closing in on becoming the longest reigning monarch in British history, yes for all time, as she will pass her great, great grandmother Queen Victoria and her 63 year 216 day continuous reign record in less than 500 days.

Ah the trials and tribulations of royalty British or American style.

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Miley Cyrus - The Seduction of Money in Entertainment

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For several years we have warned of the lure of money in Hollywood on our young teen stars and the seduction of sexuality that can entrap them. Previously we have written about the dangers to young stars like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift has seemed to manage to control the seduction of Hollywood money to her credit but Miley Cyrus, now just 17, seems to have embraced the seduction in an effort to shock her young fan base and try to compete with the older bad girls who trade off sexuality more than talent.

Here is what Chris Willman wrote about the new Miley packaging for her current album.

Miley's New Video: Parents' Council Would Like To Tame It

Posted Mon Oct 11, 2010 9:11am PDT by Chris Willman in Stop The Presses!

Has Miley Cyrus finally gone so far with her increasingly sensual image that she's been condemned by her own father?

Well, no, not exactly. But her racy new music video, "Who Owns My Heart?," has been slammed by the Parents Television Council. Funnily enough, when you check the list of folks sitting on the advisory board for this conservative watchdog group, the biggest-name celebrity listed there is—you guessed it—none other than Billy Ray Cyrus!

Apparently, Papa Cyrus was not advising the Parents Television Council when they released a statement saying: "It is unfortunate that she would participate in such a sexualized video like this one. It sends messages to her fan base that are diametrically opposed to everything she has done up to this point. Miley built her fame and fortune entirely on the backs of young girls, and it saddens us that she seems so eager to distance herself from that fan base so rapidly."

But by "us," the Parents Council apparently doesn't mean that board member Billy Ray is saddened, too. Or is he, secretly? Even if you don't have any problem with Miley getting so sexy at 17, there's evidence that it's hurting her just on a career level.

Rarely has a song gotten so much media attention and yet been as commercially unsuccessful as Cyrus' "Can't Be Tamed," the title track of her latest album. Even after a series of controversial performances of the song on various TV shows and awards programs, the single quickly flamed out, debuting at No. 8 but disappearing from the Billboard Hot 100 chart altogether after a mere 10 weeks. (By comparison, her 2009 smash "Party in the USA" spent 28 weeks in the top 10.) The Can't Be Tamed album is also absent from Billboard's list of the current 200 bestselling albums, just four months after it came out. It's sold 260,000 copies to date, anemic by the standards of the previous three Cyrus releases.

Given the performance at radio and retail of the current album and previous single, you might have expected the 17-year-old singer to retreat to safer territory for the new video. But maybe you didn't get the message last time around: Miley can't be tamed... not even by failure!

And so "Who Owns My Heart?" pushes the same buttons as the last video. She writhes around on a bed without pants on (though there are only quick flashes of what appears to be black underwear). She gyrates freely and suggestively with both men and women on the dance floor at what no one would mistake for a high school sockhop.

Whether this is envelope-pushing or not depends on your frame of reference. Compared to most other dance-pop videos, it's standard fare, if not downright tame. Compared to the videos being put out by other underage girls and/or stars who still have sitcoms running on the Disney Channel, it's provocative.

The fact that Hannah Montana's fourth and last season is still on the air complicates things—or should, to some people's minds. Although taping for the show wrapped up in May, the season is being stretched out long enough by the Disney Channel that its status as a first-run show won't end till next March's two-part season finale.

With her 18th birthday approaching next month and her status as a tween TV idol months away from officially ending, Cyrus seems to feel that there's no time to waste in attracting a demo of fans that are her age or older. Bit throwing one solidified fan base over for a less certain new one is always a calculated risk at best. And Cyrus may have jettisoned her young-girl support before she had a substitute audience of older teens and adults locked in.

It's easy to see how Cyrus and her team may have thought she'd already graduated to the next level of demographics. Initially, she had a hard time crossing over from Radio Disney to Top 40 because programmers saw her appeal as skewing too young. But "See You Again" was just too undeniable a song not to play, as was "Party in the USA." Then came "Can't Be Tamed," and as a single, it was...deniable. Radio Disney couldn't touch it, and Top 40 didn't care. Her move away from guilty-pleasure rock & roll bubblegum to dance-pop suddenly made her a competitor to Lady Gaga and a hundred other hitmakers, and though it worked with Dr. Luke helping her out on "USA," it didn't with the duller songs on the new album.

And it may have been the very raciness of her new image that sunk her with Top 40 radio. All the outcry about her alleged sexualization at 17 just reminded radio programmers of what a chance they'd taken with their older listeners by throwing her in with more mature artists in the first place.

Of course, her history of controversy for supposed suggestiveness goes back two and a half years now. Hard to believe, isn't it, that it was April 2008 when news broke about Cyrus, then 15, posing in bedsheets for Vanity Fair? In 2009, she danced around a pole at the Teen Choice Awards in a fashion that made her not every parent's choice. Also that summer, she broke up with model Justin Gaston, when she was 16 and he was 20, to take up with her somewhat more age-suitable Last Song costar, Liam Hemsworth, who is only two and a half years her senior. Hackles were further raised when a secretly recorded video of the 16-year-old performing a risque dance for a 44-year-old producer at the Last Song wrap party was leaked. "It's what people her age do," explained Billy Ray Cyrus.

This year brought her wearing a corset in the "Can't Be Tamed" video in May, followed by Cyrus simulating kissing a female dancer while performing the single on Britain's Got Talent in June. In July, the New York Times published a story headlined "Fans of Miley Cyrus Question Her New Path," which theorized that it was not prude moms who were rejecting the saucy new image but Miley's own tween fans.

There are still some scolds among the older set, to be sure. Hollywood Life, the site run by former tabloid queen Bonnie Fuller, recently ran a story allegedly quoting a "Cyrus family insider" as saying, "We're concerned for her. She's 17 years old, but is the one who makes the money and calls all the shots in the family. No one tells Miley no." Fuller wrote a separate editorial noting how Cyrus has been seen partying into the wee hours in clubs she can't legally enter, and addressed Billy Ray and Tish Cyrus directly: "Your daughter may be a big star but she's still your little girl and that means you need to be her parents."

So far, Cyrus' image change has been a bust, at least when it comes to affecting her music career. Of course, she's only one smash single away from having a chart comeback and having her accelerated maturation perceived as a brilliant career move. The problem is, the smash single that will turn it back around for her probably isn't "Who Owns My Heart," and probably isn't anywhere else on the Can't Be Tamed album.

So her next chance to prove that this sexy-mama thing is working out for her in terms of numbers and not just blogging controversy is the movie LOL: Laughing Out Loud, in which Cyrus' character engages in some very un-Disney-like behavior. That recently wrapped film won't come out till after Hannah Montana has finally concluded its run. But we have a feeling the Parents Television Council will have something to say about it.

Meanwhile, any bets on how many days or hours it'll take until Billy Ray's photo disappears from the advisory board page on the PTC website? Surely, having an organization that he supposedly helps lead condemn his little girl—and, by implication, his parenting skills—is breaking his achy breaky heart.

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Taylor Swift Sweeps Awards, No Longer Just Country Queen but Queen of the Pop World

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Now that the American Music Awards, to the shock of the non-country music industry, has anointed Taylor Swift as the voice of American music, what does that mean to the good old folks back home? In winning five AMA awards including artist of the year over Michael Jackson and others, what does that hold for the future.



It was a very good night for country music in spite of the Swift landslide but one wonders how much was because of the Swift coattails which were very much in evidence with the award to Gloriana as breakthrough artist of the year without being well known compared to Lady Gaga who lost to both Swift and Gloriana. Taylor did take Gloriana on tour with her to help introduce the singers.



Still, Swift is the story as she is now known as America's pop queen having demolished the competition in the Country Music and American Music Awards, competition that included all the best performers, male and female in country and pop music including Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, George Straight, Brad Paisley, Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride, Miranda Lambert, Sugarland, Rascal Flatts, and pop starts Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Kings of Leon, Beyonce and Daughtry.

So how does a 19 year old kid dominate the greatest artists of all music genres for the last couple of decades? How has Taylor gained world recognition as the queen of pop music and the best selling artist in the world for all types of music? And what will be the Swift impact on country music?



Just like her friend Miley Cyrus who also came from country roots, Taylor Swift is already facing the many seductions of entertainment fame and fortune as they tend to first become a self contained money machine hungry to dominate every aspect of the entertainment business. Both quickly took control of every aspect of their lives from writing music to television appearances.



The rocket to fame opened doors to performing and recording with other established artists. An avalanche of money allowed them to break new ground with music videos. Their packaging for concerts and special performances was flawless. But each degree of control has a price.



Taylor Swift has shattered record sales in a time when the tough economy has driven down the sale of records. That means a whole bunch of other performers have been squeezed out of the fragile sales market. Her concerts are becoming more rock like all the time leaving less money and fan support for other artists.



By writing her own music she has blocked untold writers from ever being a success. When she co-writes and performs with anyone else it is usually because that person is also successful, note, Miley Cyrus, Kellie Pickler, etc. But those hand picked friends are always successful in their own right thus further closing the doors of opportunity to other struggling artists and writers.



In the record business more than any other money talks. But just like Wall Street, money only feeds on more money as costs escalate, video production becomes more extravagant, concert shows become more complex and expensive, and the price of everything from tickets to records has to go up to make sure the public is bled dry.



You reach a certain point and suddenly risky investments stop while formula ideas, known techniques, or songs or styles whose cost benefit analysis offers the least risk begin to dominate. The industry vultures hover around you at all times. Some kids can handle it. Most don't.

The more commercial the kid, for example, young Miley, the more demands on them to continue making tons of money to feed their own machine. They become an industry in and of themselves and they become a slave to their own success. All the time their creativity, which thrives in the early stages gets worn out in the later stages.



That is when they are forced to compromise everything they stood for when they were young and unknown in the first place. Fame has a horrible price to pay. Just look at the lives of music legends like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. You reach a certain point when you can never again be one of the genre but become the genre. Yesterday Taylor Swift was the hope for country music, today she is the poster girl for pop music.

It will be a miracle if she ever has control of her young life again. As she is seduced by the masters of entrapment in Hollywood, New York and Wall Street through television and movies, then fashion and cosmetics, her world will open up just as her life is becoming more and more isolated. All the time the greed of those using her will keep pushing her while denying other aspiring artists the chance for any hope of success.



The people of the entertainment world now pouring ideas and dreams into this new star are masters at their game and their game is pure and simple, greed. Squeeze every last ounce of profit out of the celebrity because they might break under the pressure at any step along the way and suddenly the gravy train is gone. To them she is the golden goose and when the goose stops producing it is cast aside for the next Taylor Swift waiting in the wings.

Right now young Taylor has the enthusiasm and energy of youth. But her breakneck schedule and the amazing diversity of activity they have her doing cannot be sustained for long. Most likely she has already been lost to the country music industry. The lure of Hollywood and the mega bucks in the genre will take care of that. Others are pushed in that direction, like Carrie Underwood, but they do not stay there and survive. If they are lucky, they get back to their roots before they are broken.



Swift was a talented kid who just happened to break through in country music. There is no evidence that she was grounded in country as her roots were never deep enough to establish that fact. It was only a matter of time and luck before she found her home and most likely that is in the pop culture. Her music is every bit as much pop as country so the genre of the arrangement determines which doors are open to the artist.



Now that she is the best selling female of all music, and the heir apparent as pop queen, her true roots will never be known. Her opportunities may be endless, but the risk reward ratio just took a gigantic leap forward, meaning what you may ask? It means this. When you have reached the pinnacle of your life's endeavor there is no way to go but sideways or down. You go sideways by jumping from country to pop but from either perspective the only way to go is back down.



Let us hope and pray that Taylor Swift is not already a victim trapped in her own success. She needs to find her own way but also needs to understand she never walks alone. As she is faced with untold wealth and opportunity may she never forget that the gifts she has came from a higher source and the success as measured from that perspective is how you use your gifts to help others in need of help, not those already drowning in success.



Compassion and empathy comes from the heart, not from the largess of foundations and tax deductions. Young Taylor is at a crossroads where she can find a solid foundation in life or forever walk on quicksand. The latter comes from a world of glamour and glitz while the first comes from listening to the heart and soul.



Perhaps she should journey to the Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona with no media, no photo ops and no status symbols and see how the most sacred and oldest of cultures has survived with nothing but a bond to Father Creator and Mother Earth and a desire to bring all people together. Honoring God and all God's creations is the highest service possible to the Hopi, the Children of God and People of the Sun. Then Taylor will see what being grounded is all about.

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