Flowers
With all the many fan theories bouncing around the internet in the weeks since Miley Cyrus released her Billboard Hot 100-topping new single “Flowers,” a particular amount of attention has been paid to its relationship to Bruno Mars‘ own No. 1 hit from a decade earlier, the torch song ballad “When I Was Your Man.”
Countless fans have pointed out the lyrical similarities between the two songs — particularly their respective choruses — with “Flowers” echoing many of Mars’ regretful sentiments from an opposing, unmoved perspective. (For example, Mars laments on “Your Man,” “I should’ve bought you flowers… take you to every party, ’cause all you wanted to dance,” while Cyrus protests on “Flowers,” “I can buy myself flowers… I can take myself dancing.”) Speculation behind the extended reference has centered around the song being a favorite of Liam Hemsworth’s, furthering the idea of the song as a kiss-off to Cyrus’ real-life ex. The buzz over the two songs was even enough to give “Your Man” a nearly 20% bump in weekly streams in the frame following the release of Cyrus’ new single.
With the relationship between the two songs appearing obvious to fans, many have wondered over social media whether Mars or “Your Man” co-writers Andrew Wyatt, Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine deserve writing credits on “Flowers.” To a degree, this sort of thing — offering writing credits to obvious sources of musical inspiration — has become common practice in new songs by popular artists, even if a direct sample is not present and the use of an interpolation is an arguable matter of interpretation. Well-publicized cases of that phenomenon include Olivia Rodrigo adding Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Josh Farro to the credits of her “Good 4 U” due to the song’s musical similarities to their “Misery Business,” and Beyoncé including “Show Me Love” scribes Fred McFarlane and Allen George in the credits to her “Break My Soul” due to some overlapping sonic elements with the Robin S. smash.
The case of “Flowers” and “When I Was Your Man” is a little different, though. Those previously mentioned examples were mostly based around sonic similarities — melodic, rhythmic and textural — which were close enough in nature that a case could have been made that the original’s copyright was infringed upon. However, not only are there no direct samples or obvious interpolations between “Flowers” and “Your Man,” there are no major sonic overlaps either — no obvious shared melodies or rhythms, no major similarities in production textures. When Cyrus sings “I can buy myself flowers,” for instance, she does so in a cadence and melody of her own, without any significant similarity to how Mars sang “I should’ve bought you flowers.”
The only obvious similarities, then, are in the songs’ lyrics — which are not identical, but do share elements and ideas — and merely using some of the same words as an older song is not considered grounds for infringement.
“This is great fodder for fan theories, but lawyers should have nothing to do with it,” says Joseph Fishman, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville and an expert in music law. “There are no songwriter credits for the ‘When I Was Your Man’ writers because no license should be necessary.”
Cyrus’ arguable use of Mars’ lyrics as a reference point for her own expression is certainly not without precedent, with the “answer song” serving as a longtime staple of popular music. Famous examples include any number of responses (The Miracles’ “I Got a Job,” The Heartbeats’ “I Found a Job”) to The Silhouettes’ ’50s doo-wop staple “Get a Job,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s rejoinder to Neil Young’s “Southern Man” in their ’70s southern rock classic “Sweet Home Alabama” (“I hope Neil Young will remember/ Southern man don’t need him around anyhow”) and countless rap diss records dating back to the ongoing “Roxanne Wars” of the mid-’80s, when male rap group U.T.F.O. and female rappers Roxanne Shanté and The Real Roxanne (among others) all traded barbs with new singles. While many of these singles included lyrical references to their predecessors, most did not include additional writing credits for those songs’ performers.
“Lyrically, sure, there’s enough similarity to make listeners think that ‘Flowers’ is deliberately responding to the earlier song,” Fishman offers. “But even if we assume that’s true, so what? Using one song to issue a retort to an earlier song is not, by itself, infringement. John Mayer and Taylor Swift don’t need to cross-license anything when they write songs at each other.”
Does all this mean that there’s no chance of Mars and his co-writers eventually being added as co-writers to the “Flowers” credits? Not necessarily: Whether or not Cyrus is protected legally from legal recourse from the “Your Man” writers, she may ultimately decide to add them anyway as an act of goodwill and out of a desire to avoid further conflict, particularly with all the media attention the similarity between the songs has received. It’s not uncommon for additional songwriting credits to be added to a song after its initial release — as was the case with “Good 4 U” in 2021 — often following a period of negotiations between the concerned parties. But if the names of Mars and his co-writers stay absent in the credits, Cyrus is not likely to have any legal responsibility to give them their “Flowers” there.
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up column, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip. This week: Miley Cyrus’ runaway 2023 hit leads to gains not only for her whole discography but for a fellow ’10s superstar’s own 2013 smash, Sabrina Carpenter takes the next step towards crossover pop success, and Baby Tate has a TikTok breakout with an old song that interpolates a much older song.
“Flowers” Success Pollenates Miley Cyrus‘ Whole Back Catalog (And One Bruno Mars Hit)
Miley Cyrus‘ “Flowers” is in bloom on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, becoming just the second single in her storied pop career to top the chart, and her first to debut on top. It does so with some of the most spectacular first-full-week numbers of the decade so far: 52.6 million streams, 70,000 digital song sales and 33.5 million radio airplay audience impressions, according to Luminate.
But it’s not just the Columbia-released “Flowers” that’s blossoming this week — Cyrus’ entire back catalog is growing in the sunlight of her new release. Even without accounting for “Flowers,” Cyrus’ discography is up from 20.7 weekly million official on-demand U.S. streams in the tracking week ending Jan. 12 to 34.2 million the following week (ending Jan. 19), a 65% gain.
Read more in our full article on Miley’s streaming boom (and its Bruno Mars spillover) here.
Sabrina Carpenter Nails Down a Breakout Hot 100 Hit
Six months after releasing her Island Records debut Emails I Can’t Send, Sabrina Carpenter has her biggest hit from the pop project. “Nonsense” debuts at No. 75 on this week’s Hot 100 after making a pronounced impact on streaming charts since the beginning of 2023, and its weekly streaming totals are quickly rising.
“Nonsense,” on which Carpenter sings about feeling so flustered around a significant other that she gets tongue-tied, started going viral on TikTok over the past month. Credit goes to a combination of a sped-up version of the rhythmic pop-rock track and a cheeky dance routine set to its second verse (“I’m talkin’ all around the clock / I’m talkin’ hope nobody knocks / I’m talkin’ opposite of soft / I’m talkin’ wild, wild thoughts,” Carpenter sings). The song’s momentum was also helped by a well-choreographed live performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that was widely shared by pop fans around social media.
TikTok Cheers Along Baby Tate’s “Mickey” Reinvention
Choreographer-turned-accidental pop star Toni Basil topped the Hot 100 back in 1983 with “Mickey,” a gender-flipped cover of ’70s U.K. glam-rockers Racer’s “Kitty” turned into a cheerleading stomp-along (with help from an unforgettable music video, an early MTV staple). Atlanta rapper-singer Baby Tate introduced another step in the song’s evolution in 2016 with “Hey Mickey,” a bouncy trap banger keyed around a sultrier rendition of the classic “Mickey” hook.
“Hey Mickey” had limited commercial impact upon its release, but is making waves in 2023 thanks to — what else? — the song going viral on TikTok, with hundreds of thousands of videos of users miming along to its refrain, or posting it over various clip montages, with some videos receiving likes in the millions. It’s led to the song also detonating on streaming, with its weekly official on-demand U.S. streams growing from barely over 2,000 in mid-December to over 2.3 million for the week ending Jan. 19. And it’s still climbing — meaning Tate might be coming for Basil’s head “Mickey” cheerleader status soon enough. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
PartyNextDoor Finds a PartyNineYearsAgo With Viral ‘Her Way’
Earlier this month, PartyNextDoor returned with “Her Old Friends,” a new single that followed the R&B star’s 2022 singles “No Fuss” and “Sex in the Porsche.” Yet none of those recent tracks are burning up streaming services quite like “Her Way,” the slinky cut from his 2014 project PartyNextDoor Two, which has gotten the sped-up TikTok treatment and soared back into the public consciousness.
Over the past month, “Her Way” has increased its weekly U.S. on-demand streaming total by nearly tenfold — 498,000 streams during the week ending Dec. 22, up to 4.93 million streams during the week ending Jan. 19, according to Luminate. PND himself is playing into the revival: days after releasing “Her Old Friends,” the singer-songwriter released an official “Her Way [Sped Up]” version of the track. With more music expected from PartyNextDoor this year, “Her Way” could serve as an unexpected lead-in to a potential new project. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
The year in mega-pop is officially underway with the debut of Miley Cyrus‘ “Flowers.” The disco-pop post-breakup anthem is the first new Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 of 2023, bowing atop the chart dated Jan. 28 with 52.6 million streams, 70,000 digital songs sold and 33.5 million radio airplay impressions, according to Luminate.
Despite Cyrus’s 15-year career of hitmaking prior to “Flowers,” the song marks just her second visit to the Hot 100’s top spot (following “Wrecking Ball” in 2013) — and her first-ever No. 1 debut. The level of cross-platform success for the new song is due in part to fan speculation over the song’s real-life inspirations, including several well-circulated theories about Easter-egg allusions to Cyrus’ relationship with ex Liam Hemsworth buried throughout the song and its video.
What does the song mostly owe its tremendous initial success to? And are there any lessons other artists can take from it? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
1. “Flowers” debuts at No. 1 this week, marking Miley Cyrus’ first solo single to reach higher than No. 10 on the Hot 100 since “Wrecking Ball” in late 2013. Which part of that do you find more surprising — that “Flowers” has enjoyed such a blazing start, or that it’s been nearly a decade since Miley’s last hit on this level?
Rania Aniftos: The latter. Justice for Plastic Hearts! I can’t believe “Midnight Sky” wasn’t a No. 1 hit, or at least in the top five. Miley hasn’t stopped giving us hits, and I’m glad everyone else sees that now.
Katie Atkinson: Both? I think “Flowers” is a great, instantly catchy song with a universal (and empowering) message, but I’ve been partial to quite a few Miley songs over the last decade – namely “Midnight Sky” (especially its Stevie Nicks-assisted “Edge of Midnight” remix) and really her whole rock-star Plastic Hearts era; or her twangy Mark Ronson collab “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart”; or if you’re digging the ex-husband dirt on “Flowers,” might I suggest the sweeping, confessional “Slide Away”? Perhaps all of those (excellent) music moments from Miley over the past five years set the table for her to finally be back on top, where she clearly belongs.
Josh Glicksman: The latter is pretty stunning to me, though she has come close-ish a few times — previous lead singles “Malibu” and “Midnight Sky” reached No. 10 and No. 14, respectively. Of course, Miley Cyrus shifting her sonic direction a few times over that span is likely a factor, especially with regard to her resulting radio spin (her last time cracking the top 10 on Billboard’s Pop Airplay or Radio Songs chart is also “Wrecking Ball”). But perhaps equally shocking to me is that her last No. 1 album is Bangerz in 2013. Hopefully that gets resolved in short order as well.
Jason Lipshutz: The No. 1 debut for “Flowers.” I’m a pretty huge Miley fan, but she doesn’t have any singles over the past decade that leave me shocked that they didn’t make it to the top of the Hot 100 (although, in my heart, “Slide Away” was one of the biggest songs of 2019). The fact that “Flowers” has scored an enormous No. 1 debut isn’t too surprising when considering that Cyrus is still an A-list pop artist, and that the song has arrived during a slower part of the release calendar… but when reviewing her recent chart history, yeah, this is pretty unexpected.
Andrew Unterberger: It’s the new song’s performance for me. I’d grown used to Miley Cyrus as a pop star whose name recognition and general media interest has long outstripped her streaming or top 40 prowess — she’s had hits, but none of her singles since “Wrecking Ball” have been anywhere near unavoidable, excellent though many of them were. For her to come zooming in with an asteroid-sized hit that already seems a lock for year-end honors contention just three weeks into 2023… well, I would’ve needed quite the telescope to see it coming.
2. We’ve talked a little about some of the reasons behind the explosive debut of “Flowers” — which do you see as being the biggest factor in the song’s early success?
Rania Aniftos: While I think the fan theories surrounding how some of the lyrics may relate to her former marriage with Liam Hemsworth led people to listen to the song for the tea, at the end of the day, it’s an uplifting breakup song. No matter how many of those get released, it’s proven time and time again that people need music to heal from a heartbreak – and Miley delivered the perfect antidote for the newly single people out there.
Katie Atkinson: I’m going to vote a tie between January’s rapt music audience and the radio sheen of the Harry’s House crew. I’ve already heard the song on adult pop radio in heavy rotation, even though AC stations typically play established hits long after their debuts (alongside decades-old classics), not singles released a week prior. (Even Taylor Swift had to wait months for “Anti-Hero” to get adult pop action.) But when Diane Keaton is dancing to the song in her backyard and Gloria Gaynor is christening it the heir apparent to “I Will Survive,” the AC train apparently kicks into high gear.
Josh Glicksman: My lame instinct is to tell you that it’s a combination of these factors, but it’s hard to look past the power of a good fan theory in conjunction with TikTok’s impact. There are already more than 1.2 million user-created clips on the platform that use the song as a backdrop, and the additional layers to the perceived deeper meaning behind it all continue to roll in. Also, as a footnote to this factor, just the general presence of having a hype-worthy music video goes a long way in reaching an additional audience.
Jason Lipshutz: While “Flowers” is a strong entry in Cyrus’ singles discography, and I’m sure the Hemsworth Easter eggs drove some listenership, the timing of this rollout couldn’t have been more advantageous for its chances to hit No. 1. Announcing “Flowers” on a network television New Year’s Eve show watched by millions around the world, followed by a single release at a moment where holiday music had fallen off the charts and listeners were starving for a new jam, was a stroke of genius by Team Cyrus. Casual listeners and pop diehards alike were aware that “Flowers” was coming out on Jan. 13, and when it arrived, the single dominated the cultural conversation before streaking to No. 1.
Andrew Unterberger: It’s gotta be the social media interest. “Flowers” would’ve been a hit regardless, but unless you’re Adele, Taylor Swift or Harry Styles, you don’t score a debut this massive this quickly without a significant amount of extra-musical interest — interest in the backstory, interest in the discussion and drama around it, interest in related memes even. For better or worse, that’s the kind of stuff that really drives culture in 2023 — though it should be said that none of this off-court interest would last (or likely even exist at the first place) without a dynamite pop song at the center of it.
3. Given that the strategy and promotion behind “Flowers” seems to have paid off pretty well, what’s a lesson (if any) that you think other artists and their teams might be able take from its resounding debut?
Rania Aniftos: Be mysterious! Those posters around Los Angeles got fans so excited with little to no information. Instead of shoving the promo down their throats, Miley let the music speak for itself — and that worked out so well for her.
Katie Atkinson: I think this one might be a tad too complex to distill into advice for other artists. It goes something like this: Start out with the goodwill of a generation of tweens thanks to your wildly popular Disney Channel series, movies and albums; transition to a hip-hop-infused pop sound that nets you your first Hot 100 No. 1 and forces people to see you as an adult artist; make a decade worth of beloved-but-not-as-commercially-blazing albums that quietly win over new corners of fans and supporters; and finally, create a radio-friendly song with an undeniably universal message that arrives just at the right time to capitalize on the widest audience. That’s it!
Josh Glicksman: I’d have two big takeaways here: First, lean into a little mystique! It’d be a lot less exciting if Miley were to explicitly address all of the rumors circulating about what may and may not be a subtle jab. Instead, leave it to the listeners to speculate and continue looping back the song to check every square inch of the song and video for clues. And secondly, don’t overthink the lead single. Oftentimes, the down-the-middle fastball of a pop hit works wonders, and it’ll dance around in radio programmers’ heads long after the rest of the album rolls out.
Jason Lipshutz: I’d expect more jockeying for the First Big Release of the Year in the future. January has always been a sleepy time for pop releases, with major artists opting to save their hits for the summer months… but the way that Cyrus has been able to rule the discourse during this month must have other major artists and labels rethinking their strategies. People want new hits to kick off their year following the holidays, and in 2024 and beyond, I’d bet more artists make bids to efficiently supply those new hits.
Andrew Unterberger: Drop in January. Drop in January. Drop in January. I don’t know how many times we have to see this happen before major artists take the hint — everyone seems to think that the winter months are a dead zone for commercial releases, but that’s only because our biggest artists treat them like one. Time and time again, we see hitmakers new and established taking advantage of the lack of major competition early in the calendar and scoring career-changing hits as a result. (Hell, even the flops don’t flop as hard early in the year — you probably haven’t thought about Dua Lipa and Megan Thee Stallion’s disappointing March release “Sweetest Pie” since at least last summer, but damn if it didn’t show up at No. 62 on our 2022 Year-End Hot 100 just the same.)
4. Now that Miley has scored her first no-doubt crossover smash in a while, who’s another veteran pop star with lesser commercial returns recently who you think might be due for a home-run comeback in 2023?
Rania Aniftos: Selena Gomez. Let’s revive the old school Disney Channel days once and for all.
Katie Atkinson: We can look at the exact same 10-year time frame as Miley and see that Katy Perry’s only top 10 Hot 100 hit since 2013 is “Chained to the Rhythm” with Skip Marley, which peaked at No. 4 in 2017 and quickly dissipated. Knowing what a major force she was in pop – with nine Hot 100 No. 1s and 14 top 10s – she could be just one song away from her own renaissance.
Josh Glicksman: How about Camila Cabello? I don’t necessarily expect her to release another album on the heels of Familia, but I could see a handful of singles or notable collaborations that propel her back into the top 10 — a region that has eluded her since “Señorita,” which reached the top of the Hot 100 in 2019. She’s come close a few times since then (with “My Oh My” peaking at No. 12 in 2020 and “Bam Bam” reaching a No. 21 high last May), but perhaps 2023 is the year of the return.
Jason Lipshutz: Over the past half-decade, Demi Lovato has veered away from traditional pop in favor of genre exploration, most recently with last year’s great pop-punk exercise Holy Fvck. Discount Demi The Pop Star at your own risk, though: with a still-immaculate voice, plenty of mid-2010s hits and a ton of industry goodwill, the singer-songwriter could seamlessly return with a new hit in 2023 — especially considering that Lovato returned with an old smash going viral in 2022.
Andrew Unterberger: Kesha hasn’t seemed to have much interest in a full-bore top 40 return since her post-Dr. Luke return to recording, favoring a more personal and rock-based brand of her trademark pop assault that wasn’t much in step with radio trends of the late 2010s. But with pop-rock on the commercial upswing again and Kesha’s signature hits starting to fall in that magical nostalgia zone of 10-15 years past, I feel like her next album could have some much greater commercial potential — at least if she works with the right people on it, and if it’s something she wants in general.
5. With “Flower” power once again in full bloom on the Billboard charts, what’s your favorite flower-themed pop song of past years?
Rania Aniftos: “Bloom” by Troye Sivan perfectly blends being cheeky with being consumable for the pop audiences. It’s funny and catchy and so underrated.
Katie Atkinson: I love “Sunflower, Vol. 6” from Harry Styles’ Fine line, but it wasn’t a hit on our charts as a non-single, so maybe “Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse),” the 2018 Hot 100 topper from Post Malone and Swae Lee, is a better… pick.
Josh Glicksman: Hard to beat Outkast’s “Roses” from Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, though I’m more of a hydrangeas kind of guy, myself.
Jason Lipshutz: “Sunflower” by Swae Lee & Post Malone rules — so catchy, so guileless! — as does Harry Styles’ warmth-radiating pop-rocker “Sunflower, Vol. 6.” When are we getting “Sunflower Vol. 2-5,” though? The cycle needs to be completed, gentlemen!
Andrew Unterberger: Oh yeah, we’re taking it all the way back to 1959, with Chris Barber’s Jazz Band’s version of “Petite Fleur (Little Flower),” a hypnotic instrumental and top 5 Hot 100 hit that basically does for the clarinet what Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” does for the synthesizer. (You might also know it from a dance scene in season seven of Mad Men, or from a brilliant Dr. Dre interpolation in his supergroup The Firm’s 1997 almost-hit “Phone Tap.”)
Miley Cyrus‘ “Flowers” is in bloom on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, becoming just the second single in her storied pop career to top the chart, and her first to debut on top. It does so with some of the most spectacular first-full-week numbers of the decade so far: 52.6 million streams, 70,000 digital song sales and 33.5 million radio airplay audience impressions, according to Luminate.
But it’s not just the Columbia-released “Flowers” that’s blossoming this week — Cyrus’ entire back catalog is growing in the sunlight of her new release. Even without accounting for “Flowers,” Cyrus’ discography is up from 20.7 weekly million official on-demand U.S. streams in the tracking week ending Jan. 12 to 34.2 million the following week (ending Jan. 19), a 65% gain.
Some of the major gainers from Cyrus’ catalog include her enduring classics like “Wrecking Ball” (up from 1.9 million to 3.0 million, a 59% gain), “Party in the U.S.A.” (3.5 million to 4.8 million, 35.4%) and “We Can’t Stop (1.4 million to 2.0 million, 46.3%). One of the biggest beneficiaries was her most recent lead single prior to “Flowers”: “Midnight Sky,” from 2020’s Plastic Hearts (1.7 million to 3.2 million, 88.8%).
And the “Flowers” boost has also spread to a catalog smash by another top 40 household name of the past decade-plus: Bruno Mars. His 2013 Hot 100-topping ballad “When I Was Your Man” has been cited by popwatchers on social media as a likely inspiration for the lyrics to “Flowers,” with the latter’s chorus seeming to be in response (or at least in conversation) with the refrain to the former. (Mars: “I should’ve bought you flowers”; Cyrus: “I can buy myself flowers.”)
Evidently, the chatter over the relationship between the two songs — with fans further speculating that the reference is a subtle dig at Cyrus’ ex Liam Hemsworth, as he supposedly once dedicated the song to Cyrus following their first breakup in 2013 — also inspired fans to go back and listen to Mars’ original. “Your Man,” always a productive streamer, rose from 4.5 million to 5.3 million in weekly official on-demand streams for the week ending Jan. 19, a 19.5% gain.
Well, it didn’t take very long into 2023 for the first runaway hit to emerge — and perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that it comes from Miley Cyrus. She’s been one of the most consistently visible pop stars of the past 15 years, a cross-platform, household-name celebrity who’s maintained a devoted following while undergoing a fascinating artistic evolution from one era to the next.
Still, the speed with which “Flowers” reached exit velocity would’ve been tough to predict. While the spotlight on Cyrus has hardly diminished in the decade since she became the biggest pop star in the world off the backs of twin smashes “We Can’t Stop” and “Wrecking Ball” (the latter her first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100), she hasn’t scored the same level of hits over the past 10 years. In fact, she’s only reached the chart’s top 10 twice since 2013 — as an added artist to the remix of The Kid LAROI’s “Without You” (No. 8, 2021) and with her own “Malibu” (No. 10, 2017) — both times spending just one week in the region before sliding down the rankings.
That’s not likely to be the story of “Flowers,” however, which zooms directly to the top of this week’s Hot 100 — the first totally new No. 1 of 2023, with some of the best first-full-week numbers of any song this decade. With the single immediately being embraced on radio and streaming, and those numbers hardly looking like they’re falling off halfway into its second week, it seems like Cyrus’ new single might not just be her biggest chart hit since 2013, but may end up the biggest smash of her entire career to date.
How did it happen? Here are five reasons why “Flowers” is putting up such awesome numbers.
1. New Year’s Momentum. With the Christmas music season becoming more competitive every year, Cyrus made the wise decision to instead focus her attention on claiming the even more widely celebrated (but much less widely commemorated) neighboring holiday of New Year’s Eve. For the second straight year, Cyrus hosted the NBC special Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party during the Dec. 31 ball drop — another star-studded affair, co-hosted this time by her legendary godmother Dolly Parton, with the duo performing a mini-set of their own classics like “Wrecking Ball” and “Jolene.” The special was well-received and viewed by over five million people — a sizable audience in an era of declining linear ratings — helping boost both artists’ catalogs and further establishing Cyrus as pop’s Queen of New Year’s.
Cyrus also teased a “New Year, New Miley” with a series of billboards in the lead-up to Dec. 31 — and then announced the upcoming release of “Flowers” during the special, with a Twitter video teasing the Jan. 13 (ultimately late Jan. 12) drop. Then on Jan. 5, she announced that the single would be part of a new album, titled Endless Summer Vacation and due in March. With her recent New Year’s special both making sure Cyrus was already top of mind for her longtime fans (while perhaps introducing or reintroducing her to new ones who just happened to tune in) and giving her a platform to trumpet her return to pop, the new single arrived with built-up attention and anticipation, basically ensuring a good deal of ears on it upon its debut.
2. January dominance. The proximity to her New Year’s special wasn’t the only reason why the song’s Jan. 12 debut made for good timing. Increasingly, the relatively barren and uncompetitive post-holidays winter season has proven to be fertile ground for runaway hits — with one song in particular usually filling the void of new releases by seizing hold of the public imagination around mid-January and then not letting go until March or April. Roddy Ricch and Olivia Rodrigo scored massive career-making hits around this time in 2020 and 2021, respectively, while Encanto‘s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” (and “Pushin’ P” from Future and Gunna featuring Young Thug) also swept through the culture at the beginning of 2022.
This year, that one song appears to belong to Cyrus. It’s not exactly running unopposed on the Hot 100 this week: SZA’s “Kill Bill,” a still-growing breakout hit from the R&B star’s December blockbuster SOS, and Shakira and Bizarrap’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” an internet-storming team-up that arrived a day before Miley’s return, are both also commanding space and momentum of their own. But those songs now appear to be in the chart shadow of “Flowers,” whose much-hyped arrival in a pop landscape still mostly cluttered with 2022 (if not even longer-ago) leftovers has it poised to dominate both the discussion and the airwaves for weeks, perhaps months to come.
3. Harry’s house crew. Speaking of dominating the airwaves, look up the credits for “Flowers” and you’ll find two names who spent most of 2022 doing just that: Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson. Those are the writer-producers who played a major part in shaping the sound of each of Harry Styles’ three solo albums to date, most recently co-helming last year’s smash LP Harry’s House. With a mostly upbeat and rubbery pop-soul vibe to the set, the two helped establish a signature sound for Styles that landed somewhere between a funked-up Paul McCartney and a more domestic Bruno Mars, and also made him unavoidable on radio for the months since its May release.
That sound has proven a match for Cyrus as well, with the lush, bass-led strut of “Flowers” feeling like the logical continuation of the sonic template established by Harry’s House and its singles. With that lane re-established on top 40 — and with more explicit disco throwbacks from earlier in the decade by Doja Cat and Dua Lipa also paving the way — “Flowers” grooved right into heavy rotation, debuting at No. 18 on Billboard‘s Radio Songs chart this week with 33.5 million radio impressions, according to Luminate. And if it grows from there into the first truly ubiquitous new FM hit of 2022, no one would or should be surprised.
4. Fan theories and TikTok. While Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” broke out in 2021 on the merits of its rock-solid songcraft and overpowering performance, what really poured gasoline on the fire of its initial virality was the implied real-life love triangle that fans assumed was at the single’s core. A great pop song will always find ears, but if you want to get headlines as well, it never hurts to have a narrative hook to hang the song on — particularly if said narrative is given a thin veneer of obfuscation that fans have to dig just a little bit to get through. (Though Shakira and Bizarrap’s more explicitly s–t-talking single also proved you can find top 10 Hot 100 success with a less-subtle approach.)
In any event, “Flowers” went the “License” route, with a post-breakup I Will Survive (And Thrive) lyric that many listeners assumed was directed at celebrity ex Liam Hemsworth, with whom Cyrus split in 2019. And Cyrus took it a step further by burying Easter eggs in the song and its video to further get her fans buzzing: Is the dress she’s wearing a reference to The Hunger Games and Hemsworth’s co-star Jennifer Lawrence? Are the lyrics seemingly responding to Mars’ “When I Was Your Man” because it’s a Hemsworth favorite? Was it billed as a Jan. 13 release because that’s Hemsworth’s birthday?
All these theories and more were of course widely circulated on TikTok in the days following its release, helping the song become a sensation on the platform, and contributing to a debut of 52.6 million official U.S. streams in its first full week of availability, easily the biggest number of Cyrus’ career. It also sells 70,000 — the largest one-week total since Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” last November — which suggests older fans, who are more likely to still be spending money on music, were as interested in the song as their TikTok-ing younger counterparts.
5. Just being Miley. Although Cyrus hadn’t scored a breakout hit on the level of her pair of Bangerz classics since 2013 — and in fact practically seemed to run in the opposite direction of doing so with that album’s follow-up, 2015’s experimental psychedelic romp Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz — public affection for her had never really waned, and her star never really shrank. Every big new single of hers still got a ton of media and fan attention, and made a splashy arrival, even though they tended to recede commercially from there. Still, if an artist as talented and recognized as Cyrus gets enough cracks at making a huge pop comeback, they’re going to have a pretty good chance at breaking through with one of them.
So maybe Cyrus was overdue for a song like “Flowers,” which plays perfectly to her soaring-but-gritty voice, her cross-genre adaptability, and her reputation as a fiercely individualistic artist. And while the loved-up pop-rock of “Malibu” and arena-ready synth-rock of “Midnight Sky” might not have quite met their moment, time and tide appear to be on her side for “Flowers,” which has enraptured all kinds of audiences, put up huge initial numbers in all three Hot 100 metrics, and seems well on its way to becoming one of the defining singles of 2023. If Endless Summer Vacation can keep her winning streak rolling, it might not be another decade before she has another hit like it, either.
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