I wanted to wait until I read Vanity Fair‘s Miley Cyrus piece before commenting on the furor over the Annie Leibovitz photo of her wrapped in a sheet. It’s silly to deny that there’s a sexual dimension to the shot – How did her hair get go messy? What happened that she needs to wrap herself in sheets? What’s with the uncertain look? – but the article is about a girl growing up, and the spectre of sexuality is part of the story.

The saddest thing about her repudiation of the pictures is that it says no to a natural part of maturing. In this case, she was able to try on the style and trappings of sexiness in the safety of a studio with a respected photographer and her family; a lot of girls and young women first walk that walk under conditions that have far more repercussions.

… and in other stuff, everyone I’m talking to is planning a Tom Waits road trip to Mobile July 2 or Birmingham July 3. Unfortunately, we still don’t have any sit-down venues that meet his specs, so the city that has more Waits-influenced musicians per square mile than any other is conspicuously absent from a southern swing. For those who need a fix before then, Scarlett Johansson’s Anywhere I Lay My Head – an album of Waits covers – is better than you might expect. TV on the Radio’s David Andrew Zitek keeps her fairly safe from harm, swaddling her in artfully haunting electronics. A celebrity album reeks of the indulgence of fame, but if her name were Janet Wilson, we’d find her restraint and Sitek’s ominoso production an interesting counterpoint to Waits’ croak and clang.