With Flowers, Miley Cyrus scores the self-love anthem of 2023

The music video for “Flowers” has as much repeat value as the song itself. (Image: Screenshot from Flowers/Vevo)

The world, Gloria Gaynor included, is hooked on this new era of Miley Cyrus—with perhaps the exception of one man.

Miley Cyrus can buy her own flowers, whip her own battle ropes, wear her own gold dresses, bust her own moves all over Los Angeles—and break her own records, NBD. “Flowers”, the first single off the pop star’s upcoming album Endless Summer Vacation, arrived on streaming platforms on January 13. Within a week, it had been streamed over a 100 million times, becoming the most-streamed song ever in seven days in Spotify history.

What’s more, “Flowers” displaced the mighty BTS’ immovable “Butter”, which had held the position ever since that bop was released in May 2021. This speedy acquisition of streams is likely going to result in Miley Cyrus scoring her first No 1 debut on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in a decade. Not too shabby for an English-language track in 2023, a time when K-Pop and Latin-Pop dominate charts.

The last time Miley Cyrus debuted at No 1 on Billboard was with “Party in the U.S.A.” in 2009, a classic pop track which helped her transition from teen favourite (as Hannah Montana) into mainstream stardom. Cyrus has only grown more provocative with each release since, taking her finely-honed songwriting and singing craft into unexpected territory; working with the Flaming Lips one second on their remake of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, channelling her psy-rock inclination on Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz and Joan Jett on Plastic Hearts.

On “Flowers”, Miley Cyrus’ voice is huskier than ever, commanding your immediate attention at the forefront of a disco-funk inspired background track, almost stealing up on you with a lament for a broken past: “We were good, we were gold, the kinda dream that can’t be sold.” It begins subdued, but very quickly flips the script on its head, becoming instead a track of empowerment. Already, “Flowers” is being counted among the greatest breakup songs in history; putting her in the same league as Beyonce, Adele, Shakira and Gloria Gaynor.

The music video for “Flowers” has as much repeat value as the song itself. Think of it as a masterclass in how to, in fact, “love me better”: with something for the mind, the body and the soul. There is Miley Cyrus in gold stilettos, grooving up what is reportedly the Runyon Canyon in Los Angeles. There she is, swimming, doing bear crawls and Spiderman push-ups, a reminder that self-love begins with exercise. There she is, living her best life, by herself, in this sprawling mansion.

“Flowers” is the gold standard of manufactured pop, perhaps most evident in how quickly it set the Internet at work theorising about the song’s connection with Cyrus’ ex Liam Hemsworth. Is it about his 14 affairs while they were married? Is that the same house in which he had those affairs? Is it a rebuttal to Bruno Mars’ “When I Was Your Man”, a song Liam once dedicated to her? We’ll never know the answers to these for sure; but we do know, thanks to Miley Cyrus, that when the house you built is burning, you don’t just watch it; you dance atop of it.

How’s that for a wrecking ball?