Miley Cyrus' Brother’s Forgotten Band: the Wild True Story of Metro Station
By late 2006, Columbia Records signed Metro Station before the band had completed a single national tour. The label paired the young four-piece with proven pop-rock producers, pushing them to polish their raw electro-punk sound into an unapologetic mainstream product. In September 2007, the band released their self-titled debut album. Initial sales registered as modest, failing to crack major commercial thresholds during its first five months on shelves.
Then Columbia serviced "Shake It" to Top 40 radio stations in March 2008. The track operated on an irresistible formula: an eighth-note synthesizer hook, an elastic vocal handoff between Musso and Cyrus, and a bouncy, dance-punk chorus designed for maximum volume. By summer, the song surged into the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10, eventually peaking at Number 10 in the United States, Number 4 in the United Kingdom, and Number 2 in Australia.
The track moved more than two million paid digital downloads domestically, earning a double-platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). International touring followed immediately. Metro Station found themselves sharing arena stages with Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, and Simple Plan, straddling a peculiar cultural line between suburban mall-emo credibility and Disney-adjacent mainstream visibility.
