For this 12 months’s replace of our ongoing Biggest Pop Star by 12 months venture, Billboard is counting down our employees picks for the highest 10 pop stars of 2023 all subsequent week. First, a salute to the artist who made essentially the most spectacular comeback this 12 months: pop icon Miley Cyrus, who discovered herself again atop the highest 40 world for the primary time in a decade.
Forward of her Miley’s New 12 months’s Eve Celebration to ring in 2023, Miley Cyrus stated in an interview that her new 12 months’s decision was to “pay attention” extra. Effectively, does it rely if extra individuals than ever listened to her this 12 months?
Cyrus hit the bottom sprinting in 2023, utilizing her second NBC NYE particular – throughout which she co-hosted with godmother Dolly Parton and duetted on an impressed mash-up of “Wrecking Ball” and “I Will All the time Love You” – to announce a brand-new tune referred to as “Flowers,” together with the tagline “New 12 months, New Miley, New Single.” She seized on the sleepy January information cycle and despatched followers into overdrive, because the Smilers eagerly pieced collectively clues to decode the immediately buzzy tune’s that means. The lyric teasers pointed to a post-breakup epiphany (“I can love me higher than you’ll be able to”) and the discharge date was Jan. 13 – which simply so occurs to be the birthday of Cyrus’ ex-husband Liam Hemsworth.
However this tune was a lot extra than simply an Easter egg hunt round Cyrus’ high-profile love life — and, in the long run, the tune ended up arriving a couple of hours early, so the much-ballyhooed launch date wasn’t even her ex’s b-day in any case. Whereas Cyrus has constantly launched music over time, this felt like her first really must-listen second of the last decade — and certainly, it was about to be the largest hit of her already-impressive profession.
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“Flowers” – which Cyrus co-wrote with Gregory Aldae Hein and Michael Pollack, and was produced by Harry Types’ sunshiny secret weapons Child Harpoon and Tyler Johnson – was instantly embraced by a cross-generational solid of characters when it arrived alongside a shiny music video (which boasts almost 650 million views on YouTube). There was Gloria Gaynor — she of the final word life-after-heartbreak anthem “I Will Survive,” a frequent level of comparability for “Flowers” — who instructed Cyrus through social media: “Your new tune carries the torch of empowerment and encourages everybody to search out power in themselves to persevere and thrive. Effectively executed Miley!” Then there was Diane Keaton, who posted a video dancing along with her canine via tall grass and wrote to Cyrus: “YOUR INCREDIBLE SONG GAVE ME A REASON TO DANCE IN MY OWN BACKYARD!”
As soon as the complete tune was launched, followers continued their full-time investigation into all its Liam lyrical clues, like when Cyrus sings within the first verse “constructed a house and watched it burn,” seemingly in reference to the 2018 Malibu fireplace that claimed the then-married couple’s residence. However the evaluation additionally shifted to a brand new focus: the tune’s clear hyperlink to Bruno Mars’ 2012 hit “After I Was Your Man.” (Bruno: “I ought to have purchased you flowers.” Miley: “I can purchase myself flowers.” Bruno: “Take you to each celebration ’trigger all you needed to do was dance.” Miley: “I can take myself dancing.”) In actual fact, it seems that “Flowers” is a solution to all of the overly sentimental heartbreak songs that got here earlier than it – as Gaynor famous, as a substitute of carrying a torch for her ex, Cyrus is carrying “the torch of empowerment.”
And boy, did that message resonate. On Jan. 24, “Flowers” debuted atop the Billboard Sizzling 100 – solely Cyrus’ second No. 1 on the chart, following the three-week reign of “Wrecking Ball” 10 years earlier – and in addition launched as the largest tune on this planet, reigning on the Billboard World 200 and Billboard World Excl. U.S. charts too. On Jan. 19, it grew to become the most-streamed tune in a single week in Spotify historical past – solely to rewrite the streamer’s file with a fair larger week 2. A sampling of different “Flowers” feats: It spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Sizzling 100; it has the longest No. 1 run for a feminine artist ever on Billboard’s Grownup Modern (34 weeks) and Grownup Pop Airplay (17 weeks) charts; it’s the quickest tune to hit 1 billion streams in Spotify historical past; and it was named the fourth-best tune of 2023 by the Billboard employees.
The best way “Flowers” loomed so giant all year long threatened to overshadow the remainder of Cyrus’ 2023, throughout which she launched her eighth studio album Limitless Summer season Trip in March to a No. 3 debut (and her largest gross sales week because the Billboard 200 switched from a purely album sales-based chart to 1 utilizing equal album models in 2014). The album – which arrived with a music video for second single “River” (serving to it attain the Sizzling 100’s high 40) adopted the subsequent month by “Jaded” (high 10 on Grownup Pop Airplay) — landed within the high 20 on Billboard’s greatest albums of 2023 employees listing, with awards editor Paul Grein calling it “one of many 12 months’s best pop comebacks.”
And the Trip wasn’t over but: Cyrus had one other high 10 debut on the Sizzling 100 (and a brand new Diane Keaton co-sign) with “Used to Be Younger,” a wistful, raspy ballad that arrived as a part of the deluxe digital version of the album in August. In a nostalgic nod to Cyrus’ early days, “Younger” simply so occurred to reach the identical week as Selena Gomez’s “Single Quickly.” The Disney Channel alumnae performed up the timing, as Wizards of Waverly Place star Gomez shared a clip of her personal throwback Hannah Montana cameo with the caption: “@mileycyrus and I each have a SINGLE SOON and we’re releasing on the identical day. We now have been associates since we USED TO BE YOUNG. Excited for August twenty fifth!” Greater than three months later, “Used to Be Younger” continues to be hanging across the Sizzling 100 high 40, and simply topped the Grownup Pop Airplay chart for the primary time.
However what really stood out this 12 months is the Recording Academy lastly listening to Cyrus’ work. When the 2024 Grammy nominations have been introduced Nov. 10, Cyrus got here away with six nods – triple the 2 she’d beforehand acquired over her greater than 15-year profession – together with the Huge 4 classes of tune and file of the 12 months for “Flowers” and album of the 12 months for Trip. “It’s enjoyable to be nominated & thrilling to win however having my music be LOVED world wide is the actual trophy,” Cyrus stated in response to the nom information on social media.
Regardless of beginning the 12 months with a tv particular, Cyrus was general a bit of absent on the promotional entrance, and from the sounds of her Might cowl interview with British Vogue, she’s unsure she needs to tour once more. “Like singing for a whole bunch of hundreds of individuals isn’t actually the factor that I like,” she stated. “There’s no connection. There’s no security. It’s additionally not pure. It’s so isolating as a result of for those who’re in entrance of 100,000 individuals, then you’re alone.” She waited till Nov. 21 to lastly carry out “Flowers” in entrance of an viewers for the very first time, however the invite-only crowd at LA’s Chateau Marmont in all probability didn’t even method 100, not to mention 100,000. Per week later, as a thanks to followers, she shared a black-and-white video of the jazzy efficiency, backed by only a piano and sprinkled with cheeky advert libs (“I didn’t wish to depart you … however I needed to!/ I didn’t wish to combat … however we did!”).
In that new 12 months’s decision video on the high of the 12 months, Cyrus was additionally requested by At present present host Hoda Kotb how she’s completely different now as a 30-year-old (Cyrus simply turned 31 on Nov. 23) versus her youthful days. “It’s one way or the other that I’m utterly completely different and one way or the other I’m precisely the identical,” she answered. That may actually be stated about her comeback success with “Flowers” too: The tune is each essentially the most grown-up and absolutely realized tune we’ve ever heard from the Hannah Montana little one star-turned-adult pop powerhouse, whereas nonetheless embodying the carefree, no-effs-given angle that has made her such a firebrand all through her profession.
The final time she topped the Sizzling 100, she got here in like a wrecking ball. This time, she comes bearing flowers. However she’s nonetheless simply being Miley.
