'It's ghost slavery': the troubling world of pop holograms

Dead stars from Whitney Houston to Maria Callas are going on tour again. As Miley Cyrus explores the issue in a new Black Mirror, we uncover the greatest identity crisis in music today

Miley Cyrus Q&A: 'My personal experiences helped craft the episode'

In the star-making Disney Channel switcheroo Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus played a teenage girl who is able to metamorphose from regular eighth grader to pop icon, simply by donning a streaked blonde wig. Most of the show seems quaintly dated now, but one moment taps into a very 2019 pop anxiety. On The Other Side Of Me. a featherweight single from the programme's soundtrack album, Cyrus sang: "I flip the script so many times I forget / Who's on stage, who's in the mirror."

Cyrus has shifted her image from foam-finger humper to wholesome cowgirl since, but her new acting role centres again on the self-searching theme of that forgotten 2006 pop classic. In the new season of Black Mirror, Cyrus plays Ashley, a tween-friendly pop star whose latest marketing gimmick is "Ashley Too," a miniature talking robot toy that replicates both her Pepto-Bismol hairdo and platitude-spouting persona. The episode's trailer ends with Ashley Too acquiring potty-mouthed sentience, screaming for her owner to "get this [USB] cable out of my ass! Holy Shit!" Specifics are under wraps, but the episode seems centred around a big, knotty question: if someone's essence can be transplanted into a mechanised clone, where do we end and robots begin?