Miley Cyrus is back to releasing new music. Last night, the singer dropped her first track of the year, “Midnight Sky,” which seems to touch on why her marriage to Liam Hemsworth ended and her relationship right after with Kaitlynn Carter.
Cyrus talked with SiriusXM and Apple Music about what the song means to her.
She told SiriusXM it was more about the stigma of divorce and general relationship failure, especially placed on women. “Actually in ‘Midnight Sky,’ one of the lyrics that I’d ask everyone to kind of consider and kind of think about for themselves is the idea of ‘forever and ever, no more,'” Cyrus said. “You know, you asked me to kind of explain briefly what my song is about. And I think it’s my relationship with the stigma. That ‘forever,’ if it’s not successful or if you claimed something to be forever and you fail, then you’re a failure. And I just don’t think that. I think we’re kind of set up for devastation—in that, from the time we’re little kids, we’re taught to claim other humans as our best friends forever. And you just don’t know who you’re going to be sitting with here right now. You never know who you’re going to evolve to be and who they’re going to evolve to be. So I think that we, especially as women in relationships, a lot of the time we can get villainized when ‘forever’ doesn’t happen. And I think that you’re just really setting yourself up to kind of be disappointed—and not from a bitter or resentful way, but from a realistic and logical standpoint, especially in modern society. We’re changing and evolving and understanding ourselves from such a different perspective that it just feels like forever is definitely a big word, especially for someone young, especially as three years old, we’re like, ‘Oh, this is my best friend forever.’ It’s like, ‘You have no idea what Allie is going to become.'”
She also said on Apple Music that she wanted to reclaim her own narrative with her music. “Especially in this time, I think all of us are evolving at a speed. I definitely feel the growing pains,” she said. “I’ve been feeling even physically kind of constricted in my being. I think all of us are just feeling like we’re expanding. We are declaring what we find acceptable and not, where our morals and our values lie. That was really important for me with this record, because talking about ‘Midnight Sky,’ specifically, I felt like my story and my narrative had kind of been told for me over the past year. Obviously, I went through an extremely public breakup and, even more than that, a divorce, and with someone that I had been with for ten years. That narrative and that experience of ten years was told for me by one day from the eyes of a helicopter,” referring to the photos taken of her and Kaitlynn Carter on vacation making out right when she announced her separation from Hemsworth.
“I felt kind of villainized,” she continued. “I also felt like I kind of shut down, because it was kind of, respectfully, below me to engage with the press and the media at that time. It felt like I would rather be able to articulate this experience in a poetic way that also I can put back into my art. I never really have engaged. I’ve only played with the public and the perception in that way. So for this record, actually, the way that I even wrote ‘Midnight Sky’ was I was prepping to create a video for another song. I wrote and directed and conceptualized the video for ‘Midnight Sky,’ but it started because I was doing that with another song. Then Andrew Watt, my creative partner, came over and played me this track, and I scratched everything and said, ‘I’ve got to write this. This is the foundation of which I feel like I can lay my story on top of that.'”
Lyrics like “Lotta years went by with my hands tied up in your ropes (Your ropes) / Forever and ever, no more (No more)” and “I was born to run, I don’t belong to anyone, oh no / I don’t need to be loved by you (By you)” express how trapped Cyrus felt in her relationship and how it’s in her nature not to be tied down to any one person right now. Even last year, when speaking to ELLE for its August 2019 issue about her then-marriage to Hemsworth, Cyrus described it as untraditional.
“I think it’s very confusing to people that I’m married,” she said. “But my relationship is unique. And I don’t know that I would ever publicly allow people in there because it’s so complex, and modern, and new that I don’t think we’re in a place where people would get it. I mean, do people really think that I’m at home in a fucking apron cooking dinner? I’m in a hetero relationship, but I still am very sexually attracted to women. People become vegetarian for health reasons, but bacon is still fucking good, and I know that. I made a partner decision. This is the person I feel has my back the most. I definitely don’t fit into a stereotypical wife role. I don’t even like that word.”
Listen to the song below and read the lyrics, Cyrus’ side of her breakup story, via Genius:
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Intro
La, la, la-la, laVerse 1
Yeah, it’s been a long night and the mirror’s telling me to go home
But it’s been a long time since I felt this good on my own (Uh)
Lotta years went by with my hands tied up in your ropes (Your ropes)
Forever and ever, no more (No more)Pre-Chorus
The midnight sky is the road I’m takin’
Head high up in the clouds (Oh, oh)Chorus
I was born to run, I don’t belong to anyone, oh no
I don’t need to be loved by you (By you)
Fire in my lungs, can’t bite the devil on my tongue, oh no
I don’t need to be loved by you
See my lips on her mouth, everybody’s talkin’ now, baby
Ooh, you know it’s true (Yeah, yeah)
That I was born to run, I don’t belong to anyone, oh no
I don’t need to be loved by you (Loved by you)Post-Chorus
La, la, la-la, laVerse 2
She got her hair pulled back ’cause the sweat’s drippin’ off of her face (Her face)
Said, “It ain’t so bad if I wanna make a couple mistakes”
You should know right now that I never stay put in one place
Forever and ever, no more (No more)Pre-Chorus
The midnight sky is the road I’m takin’
Head high up in the clouds (Oh, oh)Chorus
I was born to run, I don’t belong to anyone, oh no
I don’t need to be loved by you (By you)
Fire in my lungs, can’t bite the devil on my tongue, oh no
I don’t need to be loved by you
See my lips on her mouth, everybody’s talkin’ now, baby
Ooh, you know it’s true (Yeah)
That I was born to run, I don’t belong to anyone, oh no
I don’t need to be loved by you (By you)Bridge
Oh
I don’t hide blurry eyes like you
Like youChorus
I was born to run, I don’t belong to anyone, oh no
I don’t need to be loved by you (By you)
Fire in my lungs, can’t bite the devil on my tongue, you know
I don’t need to be loved by you
See his hands ’round my waist, thought you’d never be replaced, baby
Ooh, you know it’s true (Yeah)
That I was born to run, I don’t belong to anyone, oh no
I don’t need to be loved by you (Yeah)
Outro
La, la, la-la, la
La, la
You know it’s true, you know it’s true
Loved by you
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