280: How Miley Cyrus Wrote Off Illicit Items ft. Nora Princiotti

Pop Apologists

PodcastOne

Society & Culture, Talk Radio

4.4 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This one’s for the girls who grew up on TRL, cried to Fearless, and low-key still know all the words to “He Could Be the One.” Nora Princiotti joins Lauren and Chanler to talk about the evolution of authenticity in pop, Miley’s totally unfiltered bombshells, and whether Taylor Swift might be pulling off the greatest long game in music history.

Check out Nora’s book and podcast here:

📖 Hit Girls by Nora Princiotti

🎧 Every Single Album

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(00:00) 🎤 Introduction — Meet Nora Princiotti and the book that rewrites pop history: Hit Girls.

(04:58) 👩‍🎤 Authenticity in Pop — Ashlee Simpson, Avril Lavigne, and why being “real” became a trap.

(10:22) 🎧 Poptimism vs Rockism — What’s “real music” anyway? We dive into the early 2000s’ biggest culture war.

(19:00) 🌸 Interviewing Miley Cyrus — Nora’s interview with Miley, unfiltered stories, and emotional honesty from the popstar.

(26:00) 💿 Miley Album Recs — Where to start if you’ve only heard “Flowers” and “Party in the U.S.A.”

(36:10) 🎶 “Since U Been Gone” — The story behind Kelly Clarkson’s scream-your-heart-out hit and the pop comeback no one saw coming.

(43:56) 🪩 Taylor Swift — The rerecords, the rage, and her business plays... Did she devalue her own masters on purpose?

(47:58) 👑 Brat Summer & Cowboy Carter — Cultural saturation, chart performance, and what we’re actually listening to.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode, A Popapologist, is brought to you by booking.com.
0:04.0	Booking dot yeah.
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0:16.5	Find exactly what you're booking for. Booking.com, booking. Yeah. Book today on the site or in the app.
0:28.3	We are so excited because we are joined by Nora Preciati. Norah is an author and staff writer at The Ringer,
0:35.1	where she covers culture from Taylor Swift to the National Football League. She also hosts the pop music podcast every single album. She is also
0:42.9	the author of her newly released book, Hit Girls, that is an entertaining and deeply nostalgic
0:47.9	dive into how female pop stars broke through the music industry in the 2000s and altered
0:52.8	the cultural landscape forever.
0:55.4	Nora, thank you so much for joining pop apologists.
0:57.8	Thank you for having me. I'm so excited for this.
1:00.0	It's going to be so fun. Chandler and I got an advanced copy of Hit Girls, don't mean to brag,
1:04.2	and we had such a fun time reading through about all of these pop icons that really did, I think, shape millennial
1:12.5	childhoods and were these fixtures in our lives. And it was just such a fun, you know,
1:17.9	walk down memory road to read about Avrilavine, Beyonce, Brittany, Rihanna, Lady Gaga. There's
1:24.9	just so much in here that I had forgotten.
1:30.9	So thank you for this, honestly, this historical document.
1:37.8	So it's funny you say that because a couple weeks ago, my publisher emailed me and was like,
1:39.6	I have great news.
1:42.7	And I really think they should have said like this is a real good news, bad news situation.
2:03.9	Because what it was was that the book had been chosen as like an Amazon editor's pick, which is obviously great. And I'm very happy for that. But they have to put it in a category. And they'd put it in history because that's like the 2000s is now. And I was like, okay, I'm sure this is good for sales. So I guess I'll take it. But I'm honestly incredibly insulted on behalf of millennials everywhere.
2:09.4	Chandler and I had a similar moment professionally where we were going to do a collaboration with
	...

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