Annie quits the Island

Another artist for the clumsily named "actually, what the hell am I paying a record label for" file, as Annie tells Island goodbye:

"I think it's a great label, but I never felt they were that positive to my ideas...so we decided that we're not gonna work together anymore. After Nick Gatfield, who was the head of Island left the label...a couple of months after I signed, things changed. I'm an artist with lots of ideas, plans...so I'm gonna do things my own way from now on."

As if no longer having the confidence of musicians wasn't bad enough, record companies are now being patronised by the departing artists doing the "it's not you, it's me - I've changed..." speech.

Justin Timberlake points the finger: The times are to blame

The Miley Cyrus post-coital picture that did so much to help sales of Vanity Fair, clearly, needs to be blamed on someone. Thankfully, Justin Timberlake knows who to point the finger at.

Not Annie Leibowitz for taking the photo; or Miley's management for approving it; or the magazine for running it; nor any of the people who try to justify the picture because it's not actually, definitively a sexual image of a minor so that should be alright, then; oh, no, it's the "times":

"Of course they're going to pick [on] a wholesome, American, young female [for] the first sign of anything," Timberlake said. "Unfortunately, there's a picture of her that's published with her in just a blanket. ... And that's the photo, that's the catalyst. But that's also the age we live in. People want to take a photo, and that's who you are for a year's time. We've all become victims of that."

We're not sure that Timberlake has even thought about if he has an opinion, much less if it is in any way coherent - it's not like this is a long-lens snap through a window; this is a stylised, organised photo-shoot, with artistic sign-off. The furore has been created, but not by people who wanted to attack Cyrus, but by the people who wanted to feed off her. Liebowitz, the Cyrus organisation, the magazine - they're the ones who decided to run this photo and since none of them are stupid, they must have known exactly what the reaction would be. To try and blame that on the "times we live in" is like feeding seagulls alka-seltzer and then blaming the seagulls' constitutions when they explode.

And what are the times, anyway, Justin? Isn't the nasty, over-sexualised public culture we have partly due to, ooh, songs about bringing sexy back, and pop stars dry-humping each other on stage like in New York last week? When you've helped made a culture, you can't start tutting over the culture you've made, can you?

Annie gets her gun

Having taken pictures of a half-naked child, Annie Leibovitz misses the point slightly:

"Miley and I looked at fashion photographs together and we discussed the picture in that context before we shot it. The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little make-up, and I think it is very beautiful."

You hear? It's not like she's caked Miley's face with make-up like a whore or something.

Leibovitz misses (or pretends to be missing) what might be upsetting people - it's not a question of if the image is beautiful or not, it's the extent to which an adult should be printing sexualised pictures of children in a national magazine. Perhaps the picture is being misinterpreted, but Leibovitz is not an idiot. She knows exactly what sort of reaction a sexy picture of a child is going to get - fluttering your eyelids and saying "gosh, but it's pretty" is no kind of explanation at all.

Miley Cyrus drops the bra

Poor old Miley, eh? People got upset when the internet was awash with a photo of her showing her bra; now, she's taken the bra off and are people happy? Nope. It's not clear quite what Annie Leibovitz and Vanity Fair thought would happen when they ran topless photos of Miley Cyrus, but we suspect the phrase "this will create a magazine-selling hoo-hah" wouldn't have been far from the process.

Miley, for her part, seems to have confused Leibovitz with some sort of God:

Annie took, like, a beautiful shot, and I thought it was really cool. That’s what she wanted me to do, and you can’t say no to Annie. I think it’s really artsy. It wasn’t in a skanky way.”

You can, actually, "say no to Annie" - what's she going to do? Not take your photo?

Still, Miley has now realised that not being skanky isn't enough, and issued an apology:

“I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.”

She never intended for people to say "there's that wholesome fifteen year-old kid off the Disney Channel in a shot that looks disturbingly post-coital"? Fancy that.

The photo crew are quick to stress that - although it looks like she's naked, she wasn't actually naked at all. Oh no. Although:

Originally, she was in a flesh-colored tank top but was asked to remove it."

To be fair, anyone wearing a flesh-coloured tank top probably should be asked to remove it, although it could be replaced with something less disgusting.