Ein song celebrates love, it says “You”, but the you seems to be a lyrical figure, a second self. She would do anything, the singer explains – shoot all ex-lovers, sabotage a wedding, shave her hair and have wild sex under the Texas moon: “But only with you.” The you would have to be like her in her fantasies and always be there for her. Then she would be completely with herself.
With “You” Miley Cyrus continues what she wants to say with “Flowers”, her first song from the eighth album, which has been setting new world records on streaming services for seven weeks: true love is love for yourself. You don’t need anyone to hold her hand, buy her flowers and dance with her. She can do that alone. Everything is better, the conversations and love anyway. “Yeah, I can love me better.”
“Flowers” sounds like an excerpt from Erich Fromm’s “The Art of Loving” for the single party, as celebrated by Miley Cyrus in the video. In the gold dress, she hops home, where she jumps in the pool, works out, showers, and dances with herself in the black pants suit, in the living room and on the roof. The perfect happiness of “me-time”, “sologamy”, “self-love” or whatever is sung about and filmed here, also called on Instagram, it also withstands the paparrazi helicopter in the evening sky above their house . Let the world see how in love Miley is with Miley.
As if she were someone else
“Endless Summer Vacation,” the entire album, as Miley Cyrus posted before it was even finished, is a ringing love letter to her hometown of Los Angeles, her natural setting. In the songs, LA becomes the habitat of her euphoric ego and a paradise of emotional freedom. Already ten years ago, when she was twenty, she said about herself: “Miley Cyrus is the greatest feminist of her generation.” As if Miley Cyrus were someone else.
In a way she was: At 13, she, the daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus and one of his groupies, became Hannah Montana for Disney, a series and superheroine who played a simple girl who became a megastar in 99 episodes led a double life. She ended the schizophrenic circus when she was 18 and wore crop tops that read “RIP Hannah Montana.”
Miley Cyrus on the cover of her Endless Summer Vacation album
Quelle: Sony Music Entertainment
In the 1990s, Miley Cyrus interpreted her feminism as standing on stage in her panties and covering Bob Dylan or singing “Jolene” by her godmother Dolly Parton, and instead of standing in solidarity with the abandoned Jolene, she berated her for being herself to be sorry. She stood up for Britney Spears. She recorded an album with the freaks of veteran band The Flaming Lips, the vinyl pressing of which is said to contain her urine. She came out as pansexual.
In “Come Get it Bae” she celebrated woman as the queen of creation. She sang “Party in the USA” for Kamala Harris during the campaign. And in the video for “Wrecking Ball” Miley Cyrus rode naked on a wrecking ball and licked a sledgehammer – which was interpreted as an act of revenge: once again she had separated from actor Liam Hemsworth, her husband, and then reconciled with him . “Wrecking Ball” was ten years ago.
The marriage has been history for four years, “Slide Away” sang Miley Cyrus after the divorce. Everything went there. “We built a house and watched it burn down,” says “Flowers” in a splendid mood, beats, bass and strings. The couple had lost their house in the Malibu bush fires – in retrospect, the fire becomes a metaphor for the new beginning at the beginning of a new album.
The single was released for Liam Hemsworth’s 33rd birthday. Miley Cyrus is buying her own flowers and making love like no one has ever loved her, but she’s not alone: Lana Del Rey just released her new single ‘A&W’ on her ex-boyfriend’s birthday. Shakira’s revenge song par excellence, “BZRP Music Sessions #53” portrays her unfaithful footballer husband Gerard Piqué as a dope.
“Flowers” became a meme overnight. Diane Keaton dances with herself and her dog in the unmown front yard. Jacinda Ardern, the resigning Prime Minister of New Zealand, becomes the heroine of a new female independence movement to the music of Miley Cyrus. Gloria Gaynor ennobles “Flowers” as a worthy heir to her hit “I Will Survive,” a “torch of self-empowerment.” The whole album follows the three-pronged rule of empowerment, as they say now, egocentricity and exhibitionism, a feminist formula for the 1920s.
That’s how you should hear the songs. “Wonder Woman”, “Violet Chemistry” or “Rose Colored Lenses”. Miley Cyrus sings it low and raw. After her divorce, her vocal fold edema was removed. She also loves her beautiful new voice very much.