The truth about Clara Pierce and Miley Cyrus’ discarded tracks (Exclusive)

Whilst Miley Cyrus‘ fans yearn for a rumored second volume of the album “Endless Summer Vacation” (2023), a new compendium of the singer’s tracks have been getting attention all over social media lately.

Behind an alter ego named Clara Pierce, 12 discarded tracks from various of Miley’s projects found their way to Spotify, burst the bubble of the pop star’s fandom and sparked countless theories. POPline went after this story and found some intriguing facts.

Image: Spotify

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24-year-old Willian Cordeiro is the one behind the (once verified) profile of Clara Pierce. Self-declared fan of Miley’s, he lives in Mutum (state of Minas Gerais, Brazil) and follows the singer’s steps since 2007 – still on her Hannah Montana days.

Just like any other fan of a popstar, he is particularly interested in unreleased tracks (i.e., tracks that were discarded from an official project and were not released by the artist or their label). He told POPline that, before all the buzz that took over social media around this week (it even echoed among fans and press outside of Brazil), he had already published one of Miley’s songs on streaming platforms in 2021 and another in 2022, with no repercussions. But on the latest March 10 (same date chosen by Cyrus to release her latest studio effort), Willian released a group of discarded tracks that he named “Down With Me”.

According to Willian, these were tracks that Miley worked on between 2013 and 2017. Although they never got an official release, smilers (Cyrus’ fanbase) had known most of them. “Hands of Time”, “Sagittarius”, “Can’t Live Forever”, “I Don’t Wanna Let It Go”, “Right Hand Man” and “At Least I Can Say That I Tried” are among them.

“They were for my own listening, I put them there [on Spotify] for myself only, you know? So, I wouldn’t have to listen to them online, have to download them all the time and keep going back and forth all over my cell phone apps. They were to be on Spotify”, explains Cordeiro, who also says that as he had already saved two songs to the platform, he figured it would be possible to upload an entire album.

On the songs’ metadata (which after the whole discussion that took over social media were deleted by the platform), Willian gave himself credit as their author once it was a requirement to have the tracks made available for listening.

After taking the role of interpreter, he had an idea: creating an alter ego and christening “her” as Clara Pierce. Cordeiro explains that as “Clara” was the first female name that came to his mind, and he borrowed “Pierce” from Katherine Pierce, from hit TV series “The Vampire Diaries”. Giving “Clara” a face was a task accomplished by running a picture of his own face through and AI app. He then updated Spotify’s profile picture with the result.

“I don’t want to cause harm to Miley If she didn’t release these tracks, maybe it’s because she saw them as too personal”, Cordeiro says, as he tells POPline he will not upload these tracks on Spotify again.

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Questioned about possible legal implications of this story, Willian says he “was lucky” as the tracks were deleted by Spotify, and he hopes he won’t be prosecuted: “I really hope I won’t be [sued]. I’ll be screwed if it happens”, adds, jokingly.

But what did William do to make these tracks available on digital platforms, such as Spotify?

POPline asked Willian how he managed to upload all these tracks on the digital platforms. He explained that, from an Internet tutorial, he reached ONErpm, a digital distribution platform specialized in delivering content to streaming services (such as Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and others).

In other words: one can only upload tracks on Spotify through a distributor. However, Willian may have gotten a “verified” badge after signing up to “Spotify for Artists”, and internal platform of the service.

Cordeiro also vows he didn’t earn any money from the tracks’ reproductions, but also says he doesn’t know if the distributor or any of the platforms had any kinds of monetary gains with the songs.

POPline also talked to Spotify over the current verification procedures taken by the platform. In the light of AI-generated material, we also questioned the platform over the measures taken to grant the safety and reliability of such process, as well as if the platform had any monetary gains due to the tracks. We also asked about the policies adopted by the platform for similar cases.

Regarding ONErpm, POPline asked for an appraisal of the case, which even reached international media. However, none of the companies reached out to our team as of the closing of this story.

Fans even theorized Miley herself orchestrated the whole action as a stunt

Clara Pierce’s profile caused a stir among smilers, who theorized multiple scenarios regarding the mysterious singer. Many fans considered the emergence of the tracks as an “uncommon and controversial” marketing strategy to boost interest in “Endless Summer Vacation”, due to the perceived lack of promotion of the album. For some of them, such strategy would take Cyrus’ name to the top of trending topics, in the wake of a new release.

“I couldn’t stop laughing [of these theories]. When I saw people were thinking Clara Pierce was a Miley Cyrus’ alter ego for releasing songs… Guys? If Miley were to have one, she would surely choose another name. I think “Clara” would never cross her mind! It was outrageous! People thought songs were IA-generated, and it was an alter-ego because the label wouldn’t release them. No, Miley is fully in charge of her career. If she wanted to release these songs, she would have. She’s an artist that always had things her way and no label would undermine her”, said Willian, who regards the voice of hit-single “Flowers” as “the Cher of our generation”.

Check the reactions on social media:

This wednesday (26), at the top of the buzz and right after the tracks were deleted from Spotify, Willian got to Instagram to declare mourning in respect of the death of his alter ego: “Gone, but never forgotten. Rest in peace, Clara #JusticeForClaraPierce”, he playfully posted.

* with Láisa Naiane
translation by João Bezerra