Hannah Montana

It was every kid’s daydream: to be an ordinary student by day, and a teen pop star by night. That’s the premise of Disney’s Hannah Montana television series, and it succeeded beyond its creators’ wildest dreams, making a bona fide star of Miley Cyrus and launching an empire that encompassed four seasons of television, multiple chart-topping hits and albums, and a 2009 movie. The show, which debuted in March 2006, was helmed by Cyrus, who won the starring role at the tender age of 11, buoyed (despite her youth) by her preternaturally mature, husky singing voice and her undeniable acting chops. (Her real-life father, country star Billy Ray Cyrus, played her dad and agent in the show.) For all the show’s comedic shenanigans, each hit song it featured cemented Cyrus’s status as a talented singer who could ably straddle pop, rock and country music, as heard in songs like the iconic “The Best of Both Worlds” and “He Could Be the One”. By the end of the third season, Cyrus began to feel she was outgrowing the format, and in the fourth season her character, Miley Stewart, reveals that she’s lived a double life, concluding the show’s narrative arc. The end of the family-friendly series enabled Cyrus to reinvent herself and pursue a more mature career that saw her ascend to the upper echelons of pop music—this time as her more outspoken, fearless and unscripted self.