But Cyrus comes back to earth for an emotional ‘Wrecking Ball’ performance on Sunday night.

Miley Cyrus has moved beyond foam fingers and teddy bears. Now, she’s onto aliens, as she made clear with her performance at the 2013 MTV EMA on Sunday night (November 10).

The 20-year-old star went full-throttle with a galactic theme when she hit the stage in Amsterdam, for her first set at the annual awards show since 2010.

After her naughty VMAs performance, fans were certainly curious to see what Miley had in store, but on Sunday she went in a very different direction — and definitely wore more clothing than she did on August 25.

But that didn’t mean Miley’s appearance was predictable. To the contrary, the Bangerz star hit the Ziggo Dome red carpet a low-cut custom dress that paid tribute to Biggie and Tupac, and later, lit up what appeared to be a fragrant cigarette while accepting the award for Best Video.

As the show’s opening act, Miley touched down in the middle of the stage in a flash of light, descending from above in her faux rocket, as eerie alien-like figures clothed in long gray robes and orb-shaped headpieces circled her.

She emerged from her spaceship clad in a skintight silver dress, belting out her vocals to “We Can’t Stop” into a microphone modeled in the form of a rocket.

Upon landing, she strutted her stuff around the stage, jamming out with her tiny sidekick clothed in black latex, as her orbed creatures continued to circle her while she finished the tune.

Miley recently linked up with Future to film the space-themed video for “Real and True”, which finds her playing an astronaut, but it turns out she’s been feeling the galactic vibe for some time now.

“I’ve had this vision for a while; I’ve wanted to somehow involve something around aliens — because I really love aliens.

Obviously, I really loved teddy bears so I built a whole show around teddy bears,” Cyrus told MTV News shortly before the EMA, where she came in up for four awards, including Best Female and Best Pop. “And I also like aliens, so I built the show around aliens.

And when I knew that [host] RedFoo was going to be there, I just felt he was the perfect person to get involved in what I’m all about, which is just having fun on the show, and not doing anything too serious.”

And while Miley tends to put the emphasis on having fun during her performances, when she returned to the stage later in the night to perform her hit “Wrecking Ball,” things were much more subdued.

Standing in front of a large LED screen, which showed her own tear-stained face, she belted out the emotional track without any backups, pyrotechnics or flashy accessories, putting the focus solely on her voice.

Cyrus must have been feeling good about her performances because by the time she returned to the stage to accept the award for Best Video for “Wrecking Ball,” she was ready to light up.

Crouching down onstage in a white fur and dangerously high-cut bodysuit, she fished out a cig and took a puff as the crowd went wild.

(The Dutch in Amsterdam are, of course, famous for a more lax attitude toward marijuana use, though we can’t say for sure that’s what Miley was burning.)

With her album Bangerz now in stores and Miley-mania at fever pitch, she also explained to MTV News how it felt to return to the EMA stage after her last performance three years ago.

“The last time I was here, I was doing ‘Who Owns My Heart?’ So now to be here, and be on my record, and my record’s doing so well … it’s amazing,” she said.

“I didn’t know how it was going to be once I was in somewhere that I’m not from, and how people were going to relate to the record, and it’s been amazing.”