Flowers

Album: Endless Summer Vacation (2023)
Charted: 1 1
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Songfacts®:

  • Miley Cyrus first met Australian actor Liam Hemsworth on the set of their film The Last Song. They started dating and had an on-and-off-again relationship for several years that included two engagements. Cyrus and Hemsworth eventually married on December 23, 2018, in a private ceremony at their Nashville home. The marriage crumbled eight months later, and their divorce was finalized in January 2020.

    Here, Cyrus reflects on their doomed relationship and affirms that she doesn't need Hemsworth to make her happy.
  • Cyrus starts the breezy song by recalling how their relationship started off so well. But then they lost their $2.5 million southern California home during the Woolsey fires.

    We were good, we were gold
    Kind of dream that can't be sold
    We were right 'til we weren't
    Built a home and watched it burn


    The Woolsey Fire, which occurred between November 8-21, 2018, caused extensive damage in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties of California. As well as Cyrus, many other musicians lost their homes to the wildfire, including Fred Durst, Neil Young, Lil Pump and Robin Thicke. Cyrus uses it as metaphor for how her union with Hemsworth burned out.
  • During the chorus, Cyrus affirms that she's learned to love herself and is blooming on her own, while taking Hemsworth to task for slacking off on their relationship.

    I can buy myself flowers
    Write my name in sand
    Talk to myself for hours, yeah
    Say things you don't understand
    I can take myself dancing, yeah
    I can hold my own hand
    Yeah, I can love me better than you can


    The song serves as a reminder to Cyrus of her own worth and the type of love she deserves. The pop star is determined to receive the love she needs in the form and intensity she desires, and if she can't find it in a partner, she will give it to herself. The flowers mentioned in the lyrics symbolize the attention and care that she needs and wants to give to herself.
  • The chorus interpolates Bruno Mars' 2013 piano ballad "When I Was Your Man," where the singer laments a girl he let get away. Mars croons:

    I should've bought you flowers
    And held your hand
    Shoulda gave you all my hours
    When I had the chance
    Take you to every party
    'Cause all you wanted to do was dance
    Now my baby's dancing
    But she's dancing with another man


    It's unclear why the chorus of "Flowers" mirrors "When I Was Your Man." Some fans speculated Hemsworth once dedicated the song to Cyrus after the couple broke off their first engagement in late 2013.
  • Cyrus doesn't mention Hemsworth by name, and she's had several other romances. So why do we think she is talking about the Australian actor? Besides the reference to The Woolsey Fire, Cyrus released "Flowers" as her first single from Endless Summer Vacation on January 13, 2023 - Hemsworth's 33rd birthday.

    But to put a spanner in the works, one of Cyrus other boyfriends, Australian singer-songwriter Cody Simpson, recorded a song titled "Flowers" in 2015. And guess who designed the artwork for the single? Yep, Miley Cyrus.
  • Cyrus co-wrote "Flowers" with:

    New York songwriter Michael Pollack. He contributed to two songs on Cyrus' previous album, Plastic Hearts, including her Dua Lipa collaboration "Prisoner."

    LA-based songwriter Aldae. His other credits include Demi Lovato and Marshmello's "OK Not To Be OK" and Justin Bieber' "Unstable."

    Following a lengthy conversation with Cyrus regarding life, Aldae and Pollack started developing the narrative she wanted to convey based on a flower concept that Pollack had been considering earlier. When they regrouped with Cyrus to explore chords and melody, everything else fell into place swiftly. "Within an hour, everything came together flawlessly," Aldae recalled to Genius. "The transitions were excellent, and Miley wholeheartedly incorporated her story."
  • Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson produced the sleek, disco-influenced pop track. They're best known for their work with Harry Styles, including helming 12 out of the 13 tracks on Harry's House.
  • Miley Cyrus has written several songs that are believed to be about her relationship with Liam Hemsworth. Examples include:

    2010 "Permanent December" finds Cyrus expressing her longing for her partner while she is on tour. Cyrus recorded the track for Can't Be Tamed. She mentioned to MTV News that the album has some songs about her then-boyfriend Liam Hemsworth, and although she didn't specify which ones, this is a likely candidate.

    2013 "Drive" is a breakup anthem inspired by the difficulties Cyrus was having with Hemsworth.

    2013 "Maybe You're Right" was written in the wake of their then-deteriorating romance. Cyrus and Hemsworth called off their engagement in September 2013.

    2017 "Malibu" is a love song Cyrus penned about Hemsworth after they got back together.

    2019 "Slide Away" is a raw and honest single released by Cyrus a week after she announced her separation from her husband.
  • "Flowers" debuted at #1 on the UK Singles chart. It marked Miley's third UK chart-topper, following "We Can't Stop" and "Wrecking Ball," both in 2013.
  • The song set a new record on Spotify with over 96 million plays in its first seven days of release, surpassing the previous record held by Adele's "Easy On Me" with 85 million streams. "Flowers" also became the fastest song to reach 100 million streams in Spotify's history.

    The following week, Cyrus beat her own record by scoring more than 115 million streams of the song.
  • Among the Easter eggs Cyrus littered in the music video is the vintage gold Yves Saint Laurent dress she wore while strutting through LA. Fans were quick to point out that Hemsworth's The Hunger Games co-star Jennifer Lawrence wore a similar dress at film's LA premiere in 2012.
  • It's probably just a coincidence, but "Flowers" shares some melodic similarities with a 1973 Italian song called "Dettagli" by Ornella Vanoni.
  • The idea for the song began with the word "flowers" itself. From there, the lyrics came relatively quickly. The only line that gave Cyrus, Pollack and Aldae trouble was the end of the pre-chorus ("I didn't wanna leave you, I didn't wanna lie"). Eventually they came up with "Started to cry but then remembered I."

    "I think it was really important to contrast the empowerment of the chorus with a little bit of sadness and vulnerability, and that line 'started to cry, but then remembered I' does exactly that," Pollack told Billboard. "I also love that the sentence is incomplete. It's a subtle cliffhanger to take you to the chorus."
  • Initially, the chorus was less empowering, but it developed into something more powerful. "I remember singing the tagline with the lyric, 'But I could never love me like you can,' and Miley and Greg wanted to flip the script and say, 'Yeah, I can love me better than you can,'" said Pollock. "Once we had the tagline established, the rest of the lyric came rather quickly."
  • When Cyrus started writing for Endless Summer Vacation, she penned several songs with Pollack and Aldae, conceived only with piano. Cyrus closes the album with one of those tracks, the demo version of "Flowers".
  • Miley Cyrus did the Official Chart double in the UK when Endless Summer Vacation landed straight in at #1 on the UK Albums Chart, coinciding with "Flowers" securing its ninth week at the top of the Official Singles Chart.

    Miley previously reigned supreme on both the Official Singles and Albums Chart simultaneously in 2013, when both "Wrecking Ball" and Bangerz hit the peak position in the same week.
  • "Flowers" claimed the throne as the fastest song in Spotify history to surpass a staggering one billion streams. It achieved the feat in just 112 days, surpassing the previous record held by Harry Styles' "As It Was" and Justin Bieber and The Kid LAROI's "Stay," which both reached the milestone in 118 days.
  • Miley Cyrus gave the song its live debut at an invite-only event at Los Angeles' Chateau Marmont hotel on October 21, 2023.
  • The song broke the record for the longest run atop Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart when it ruled for its 37th week on the survey dated January 20, 2024. It bypassed Maroon 5's "Girls Like You," which spent 36 weeks at #1 in 2018-2019.
  • "Flowers" won the Grammy Awards for Record Of The Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2024 ceremony. During her acceptance speech for Best Pop Solo Performance, Cyrus told this story: "There was a little boy that all he wanted for his birthday was a butterfly, so his parents gave him a butterfly net. He was so excited. He went out in the sun and started swinging the net, but with no luck. Finally, he sat down on the ground and surrendered - he was OK that he wasn't going to catch the beautiful butterfly. And right when he did, the butterfly came and landed right on the tip of his nose. This song, 'Flowers,' is my butterfly."

    Later in the ceremony, Cyrus performed the song in the spirit of Tina Turner, one of her idols who died the previous year. For one of the "I remembered I..." lines, Cyrus ad-libbed, "I remembered I just won my first Grammy!"

    It was indeed her first Grammy win. She had been nominated twice in previous years and six times for the 2024 ceremony.

Comments: 1

  • Pepe from Ecuadorfellas! attention! im so horny because i discover that the melody in the chorus of the song of miley, is too similar to the iconic historic song called "I will survive", that is a very interestinc fact because if we listen carefully the lyrics of the song, it means that a person who wants to be a superior person that it was in the past, and, is very interesting, 'cause if we think miley is trying to tell us that she is a better person in the moment that she leaves liam, and he is a very very bad person =(
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