Miley Cyrus explodes into the room in a black Saint Laurent slip dress, a two-foot Gucci beefeater-style hat on her head.

“Is it sickening,” she demands rhetorically, her delicious southern rasp familiar in a way only a squillion light years of celebrity living can make it.

In her thrall, festooned around the suite on the 33rd floor of The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad, sit her travelling chorus of creatives, the indispensable “comfort blanket” of five men who embody the sort of modern Hollywood bohemia she adores, and who accordingly she goes everywhere with. They offer consensus: yes. Just to be sure she struts the room wall-to-wall, eyes darting.

Cyrus – now 30 (how is she only 30?), with several lifetimes of glory, nonsense, trauma and good times under her belt – is in showgirl mode. For the moment, at least. My word, she’s a gas. “What is with this art?” she asks hammily between poses, offended by some neutral swirls in a picture frame. Then she catches sight of herself on the iPhone screen of Stephen Galloway, acclaimed choreographer and her friend. “It’s giving Pam Tillis,” she decrees, patting the towering fluffy black helmet to the delight of her troop, before launching into a funny, gossipy tale about said Pam, the bouffanted country singer, who she met recently and who asked her to pass her best on to Cyrus’s godmother, Dolly Parton, which she dutifully did. Parton sweetly replied, “Oh, Pam, I haven’t seen her in years.”

“But thennn,” says Cyrus, tingling with delight, “I went on to Pam’s Instagram and what do you know? There’s a photo of her with Dolly [taken recently]! Country shade,” she declares of her beloved Dolly: “You can’t beat it.” She dives on to the bed next to me, shaking out her bleachy, rooty, sexy hair. Fear not. The monologue keeps going: “Dinosaur dust art”; “These earrings are not it”; “Am I going on tour? Yeah, the Aman hotel tour. Singing in the lobby for that complimentary massage.”

To wit: a gas. Although you can’t help noticing it takes close to 20 minutes for Cyrus to sustain eye contact that lasts longer than a second. She is, seemingly, not a person who takes joy in the novelty of strangers, who doesn’t trust them right away. Frankly, why should she?

But while the initial energy is remote and flighty, it takes absolutely no time at all to become riveted by her. Astonishingly famous since her early teens, hers is a fate perhaps only understood by a handful of people during mass media’s relatively short history. One’s reductive first instinct is to interpret her thrilling lack of chill as toxic-media-induced, post-child-stardom neurosis. But she is having none of that.

The shopworn narrative of a famous woman’s survival and triumph? “So f**king basic.” Some time later, when it’s only us chatting, she says, “One thing I wouldn’t want this story to become is a complaint of being a woman in the industry. I don’t need this to be a women’s empowerment story. I wear my empowerment at all times. I don’t need to profess it.”

In truth, she is sage, witty and unpredictable, prone to find the whole machinery of fame ridiculous and damaging – especially for women. She is essentially done with engaging or even talking about the whole rodeo. Certainly in trad media terms. “Why would I do British Vogue?” she wonders aloud at one point later, just the two of us on a sofa. “Why would I even do an interview?” She seems genuinely curious to have found herself here.

Well, real talk. She was dying to be photographed by Steven Meisel. She also happens to be enjoying one of the most successful years of her career as a musician, to say nothing of her arrival at a new fashion peak, thanks to a fabulous run of vintage looks at her New Year’s Eve special for American network television, and a smattering of judicious appearances, including at the Versace runway show in LA in the days before the Oscars (an absolute fashion nut, she is quick to credit her beloved personal stylist Bradley Kenneth’s hand in her current era of killer looks).

Then there is “Flowers”. At the time of writing, the song – an addictive comeback single that has made its way to instant classic status – has spent eight weeks at the top of the US Billboard charts, with another 10 consecutive at No1 in the UK. In early May it became the fastest song in the history of Spotify to clock up a billion streams. Released in January, at this point its staying power is so remarkable it seems in danger of becoming the song of the summer. Who knows. Given the album is called Endless Summer Vacation – which, for Miley, is as much lifestyle mantra as record title – perhaps it will?