Songfacts®:

• Here, Dua Lipa joins Miley Cyrus to sing about a controlling relationship where their lovers manipulate them to stay.
  
  Prisoner, prisoner, locked up
  Can't get you off my mind, off my mind
  Lord knows I tried a million times, million times,
  Why can't you, why can't you just let me go?
  
  The girls feel like they can't leave their men, which makes them feel like prisoners.
• Released on November 19, 2020 as the second single from Plastic Hearts, Miley Cyrus told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 it's a perfect song for the COVID-era. "We're just trapped in our emotions right now. I mean, really me, there's no escaping it. It's like, 'Locked up, can't get you off my mind.'"
• The synth-heavy rock track is a blend of Dua's techno and Miley's pop-rock styles. Cyrus told Zane Lowe it was one of several songs the two powerhouse divas cut together. "She wanted to keep going until it was right, until we found the one that honors our individuality," she said of Lipa. "We just waited until we felt like, "Now this is Dua-Miley song. You can just, everything about it reflects us."
• The song's chorus interpolates the melody from Olivia Newton-John's "Physical." It is the second time in 2020 that Dua Lipa channeled the classic 1981 hit, following her song of the same title.
• Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa wrote the song with:
  
  Jon Bellion, Michael Pollack and The Monsters & Strangerz, who all contributed towards the writing of Maroon 5's "Memories."
  
  Andrew Watt and Ali Tamposi, who along with Jon Bellion and a couple of others co-wrote Cyrus' previous single, "Midnight Sky."
  
  Andrew Watt and The Monsters & Strangerz produced the synthy new wave track.
• Cyrus and Alana O'Herlihy co-directed the video, which was filmed over two days on September 30 and October 1, 2020. The visual shows the two singers taking a wild and grungy ride through New York City on a tour bus before hitting a party. Later, the pair perform the song to a packed audience.
• The video ends with a message that pops up onscreen: "In loving memory of all my exes, eat s--t". Asked by Lisa Wilkinson of Australia's The Project why she included the cheeky send-off to her exes, Miley said she was trying to make light of hurtful breakups.
  
  "I think life can be very painful sometimes so poking fun at it and laughing along with it," she explained. "I always feel like it's (life) laughing at me, you know, pulling strings, just creating whatever chaos it wants to and it doesn't take it easy on us."
  
  Miley added that flipping off her exes was a way that she could "fight back at that and poke a little fun at it and create something that was campy."
• The song is also included on Future Nostalgia: The Moonlight Edition, Dua Lipa's 2021 reissue of her second studio album, Future Nostalgia.
• Miley Cyrus' collaboration with Dua Lipa on "Prisoner" wasn't her original vision. "Okay, well that wasn't my idea," she stated on the Every Single Album podcast. "No shade to Dua Lipa, it just isn't cohesive with the album."
  
  Cyrus believes Lipa would have been a better fit for her 2023 album, Endless Summer Vacation, suggesting songs like "Wildcard" or "River" as potential matches.
  
  Cyrus went on to say that Dua Lipa's inclusion on "Prisoner" was seen as "medicinal" by her team. She joked they were trying to "salvage a sinking career" (hers, not Lipa's) because they weren't pleased with the direction the Plastic Hearts album was taking. "They were like, 'Uh-oh, this was not what we had in mind to un-sink this ship,'" Miley quipped. "They were like, 'Oh great, here's this, like, pile of s--t album she gave us, let's spray some Dua Lipa [on it], that'll make it better.'"