An exploration into Miley Cyrus’ ‘Flowers’: a perfect self-love bop?

Miley Cyrus is swinging into 2023 on the Empire State Building, as the Statue of Liberty, on the Eiffel Tower and any other landmark found in a meme across the internet. Her new single Flowers, released on the 13th of January, has officially become the fastest song to surpass 100 million streams in the history of Spotify. Not only that but Miley is the first artist to hit that milestone in less than a week since the release date. Safe to say she has fans all over social media raving about this new Miley era.

Eagle-eyed listeners may recognise similar lyrics from When I Was Your Man by Bruno Mars (2012). Miley has taken these lyrics from a song about a guy singing to a past love and created a self-love tune. Singing I could buy myself flowers, write my name in the sand… I could take myself dancing. Flowers celebrates the freedom you have when you love yourself, suggesting that there’s no actual loss in a breakup when you have yourself as your biggest support.

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As with many pop songs, there are a few nods to the artist’s past relationships. In light of this, Global singer Shakira has recently come out with this quote, Women don’t cry anymore, we cash in. Which begs the question, when did music become about love and breakups? The answer? Always. Since the beginning of time, artists have poured their emotions into their work. It just so happens in this day and age that said art reaches more people, which includes the aforementioned ex, the artist’s legions of fans, the ex’s fans, and the innocent in-betweeners that benefit from self-love bops. Leading to chaotic theories on the internet which creates hype for the artist- great for boosting sales but perhaps not so great for moving forward. What Miley has done here is promote loving yourself. Whilst there may be subtle hints as to who she’s singing about, wondering who this is dismisses the point. Don’t rely entirely on a partner when you can always buy yourself flowers.