Miley Cyrus cranked the dial when it came to her signature rock aesthetic over the weekend, appearing as the musical guest on Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live takeover. While the past year has seen the pop star single-handedly revive the shag, and then the mullet, Miley took to the SNL stage in a craftedly chaotic mohawk ponytail.

Performing “Plastic Hearts” and “Without You”, the singer’s locks had been pulled into a high pony, while on the top, her hair had been tousled and blow-dried to a mohawk ridge. Using extensions to get the look, Miley’s fauxhawk was a lesson in hybridised beauty, at once polished and punk. 

If Miley’s shaggy mullets were anything to go by, ostensibly the most instagrammed cut of 2020, the ponytailed mohawk is set to become big business. And while the shag befitted a grubby year of being stuck indoors, Miley’s latest coiffure is a high voltage alternative, stiffened with a whole load of pent-up energy and a will to be seen.

Of course, now a decade into her career, Miley has relied heavily on beauty and fashion as a means of reinvention. Be it Hannah Montana’s spangly boleros and chunky highlights, the scalp-seizing space buns and PVC swimsuits of Bangerz, or the sweat-slicked mullets and tattered crop tops of Plastic Hearts.

Now complete with the kind of campy maribou-feathered dresses seen on SNL, could this fauxhawk signal an incoming Miley era – an amped up evolution for a Nashville country gal turned glam-rock godess?