Originally published February 10th, 2023
The thing nobody tells you about evangelical childhood is that you are simultaneously permitted to consume more and fewer media properties than your peers. And by more I don’t mean you fill the void with Veggie Tales or Adventures in Odyssey or other explicitly Christian works to which your secular friends haven’t been exposed. I mean that regardless of how restricted your entertainment repertoire feels, there’s always some poor bastard forbidden from watching or listening to works it wouldn’t even occur to your own parents to object to.
The example by which I’m most haunted is this time in fifth grade youth group, when one girl ground a heated debate over the best Miley Cyrus In A Blonde Wig song to a halt with, “I’m not allowed to watch Hannah Montana.”
Technically she wasn’t allowed to watch the Disney Channel (or Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network) across the board — there wasn’t anything exceptionally immoral about Hannah Montana, especially given that one of its contemporaries (That’s So Raven) was about an actual teen psychic — but she led with Hannah Montana, and thus it is Hannah Montana that often drifts across my mindscape like a tumbleweed when I’m up too late spiraling. Nowadays the subject of these 2:00 A.M. spirals is the cognitive sledgehammer that is fundamentalist rhetoric, but when I was ten, I only thought to comb the show and its soundtrack for potentially blasphemous content. Somebody’s parents had to be wrong here — hers or mine — and if it was mine, well…
At the time eight songs credited to Miley Cyrus’s fictitious Hannah Montana persona had been released, including the show’s theme song, “The Best of Both Worlds.” The number eight held no significance. Seven, however, was kind of infamous for its vices. Could it be that all but one of these songs make subtextual cases for each of the seven deadly sins? Obviously!
For the purposes of this exercise, I have removed the song “The Other Side of Me” (track seven on Hannah Montana) from consideration, on account of it being my favorite of the bunch, and therefore the least deserving of equation to sin. The rest of them, though, are death penalty evil, and I’ll prove it.
TRACK ONE: “THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS” — GREED
Only in the show’s theme were the powers that be bold enough to spell out the song’s nefarious undertones right there in the title. How much more obvious could they have made it? Gee, Hannah! How come your dad lets you have the best of both worlds? And what constitutes the best of each world? In her life as a pop superstar, she gets the limo out front. Hottest styles, every shoe, every color. In her life as a normal teenager, she gets anonymity — a respite from the horrors of catching a glimpse of Orlando Bloom at a movie premiere and hearing one’s songs on the radio. Hannah Montana was immune to the soul-crushing downsides of child stardom. Tell me, fictional fourteen-year-old, what you ever did to deserve this. Most people don’t even get the best of one world, you ingrate.
And the most damning evidence? A rerecording of the song closes out the Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack album. Gee, Miley! How come Disney lets you have two TBOBWs?
TRACK TWO: “WHO SAID” — PRIDE
Witness our audacious villainess make an unearned bid for both journalist Clark Kent’s side gig and the Oval Office. “I’m more than just your average girl,” her sales pitch begins. Why? By which metric? Quite literally, who said? Don’t worry, she lets us know four times per chorus — “I say, I say that I know I can.” We’re only two songs in, and already her ego has eclipsed all logic.
TRACK THREE: “JUST LIKE YOU” — ENVY
The least convincing of the album’s No, Really, Being Famous Is Awesome trilogy. You wish you were just like me, Montana.
TRACK FOUR: “PUMPIN’ UP THE PARTY” — GLUTTONY
Partying? Indulgent. Increasing the volume of party? Unforgivable.
TRACK FIVE: “IF WE WERE A MOVIE” — LUST
The soundtrack’s only straightforward love song, and it was rereleased with a Corbin Bleu feature three years later. I rest my case.
TRACK SIX: “I GOT NERVE” — WRATH
Admittedly the biggest reach of the list, but listen to those opening guitar chords and try to think of a deadly sin other than wrath. The least charitable read of the lyrics I can come up with reveals a Hannah who castigates romantic prospects for deigning to be flawed when they aren’t even dating yet. “Gonna get what I deserve,” she threatens at the end of each chorus. So, jail?
(TRACK SEVEN: “THE OTHER SIDE OF ME” — SINLESS. VIRTUOUS. LISTEN TO THAT AUTOTUNE ON THE WORD “REALITY.” HAVE YOUR EARS EVER BEEN GRACED BY SOMETHING SO CHARMING?)
TRACK EIGHT: “THIS IS THE LIFE” — SLOTH
This is actually the first song to appear in the show itself. The tone setter. Before the avaricious thesis statement that is “The Best of Both Worlds,” we open on some random rich girl belting that this is indeed, the life,, before cutting to a reporter detailing how cool and famous and successful she is. But the character Hannah Montana is canonically a nepotism baby — the daughter of a successful country singer. She did not work for this. She has not earned it. She was born at the top. When she tells you that this is the life, she means it’s the only one she’s ever known. Fin.
The catalyst for this theory disappeared from youth group fairly soon after that, (I hope she’s well!) and the lead single from 2007’s Hannah Montana 2 album was one “Nobody’s Perfect,” which encouraged a focus on self-improvement, and was deemed the singer’s crowning achievement by Entertainment Weekly in 2017. I am not so naïve as to assume that girl’s parents would’ve been swayed whatsoever by this development. But the reasons I have remained attached to the seven deadly sins theory are: it makes as much sense as anything else, (read: none) and it’s really, really funny. Because the thing nobody tells you about adulthood — of any belief system — is that some people have moral codes so terrifyingly incomprehensible you simply have no choice but to goof about them.
The catalyst for this theory disappeared from youth group fairly soon after that, (I hope she’s well!) and the lead single from 2007’s Hannah Montana 2 album was one “Nobody’s Perfect,” which encouraged a focus on self-improvement, and was deemed the singer’s crowning achievement by Entertainment Weekly in 2017. I am not so naïve as to assume that girl’s parents would’ve been swayed whatsoever by this development. But the reasons I have remained attached to the seven deadly sins theory are: it makes as much sense as anything else, (read: none) and it’s really, really funny. Because the thing nobody tells you about adulthood — of any belief system — is that some people have moral codes so terrifyingly incomprehensible you simply have no choice but to goof about them.