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thesinglesjukebox · 5 months

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MILEY CYRUS - "FLOWERS"

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We may prefer to have flowers brought to us in the pouring rain...

[4.60]

Edward Okulicz: Something about this song clearly resonated with a lot of people, and months later I'm still unsure what it is. My best guess is that the self-confidence of the lyrics is given a mournful undertone by the melody and delivery. Now twice the people going through a break-up can relate! Good work, Miley; it's a strong melody. [7]

Tara Hillegeist: Fucking Miley. [1]

Frank Falisi: What's in a voice? Intention with friction, and then time. To write about Miley's voice in terms of its recognizability risks the redundancy of writing about the sun's warmth or the grass blade's cool. Listen: she sings with one of the seminal grains in pop music. In spite of this fact or because of it, the voice has jostled through myriad transforming forms, since Hannah Montana, since Breakout. Sometimes a singular instrument bargains too recklessly with the free market, and while the chameleonic pop path is far from exclusive to Miley, her voice has been aggressively strip-mined by trends and forecasts, by its singer. And like a Fielder-Safdie-Stone curse, that Billboard cover story where she forced the voice to renounce hip-hop as a regressive and swear fealty to respectable family/blasé liberal politics, the changes have felt like market calibrations rather than aesthetic ones. She apologized, and to be sure, no pop presence deserves to be read one way: part of a stardom's symbolism is that it speaks in a voice all on its own, in fact has no choice in the matter. But the voice's grain has turned to game (show). Everything since has been a reduction: upraising "authentic country", a half-hearted dalliance with Joan Jettness, eventually embracing life as a jukebox quartering out covers; the plastic glam-gloss possibilities of Bangerz barely warble out in the fricatives. "Flowers" is ostensibly a kiss-off, but all it does is reaffirm the transfiguration of a pop arc into a loop. It trades "Malibu"'s domestic bliss for independent womanhood, a similar and familiar commodity de rigueur for re-branding icons. One wonders what the song would do if it rose to the occasion with real venom, if it let the voice (which is to say, the feeling) jab through the veneer of canned narrative. It doesn't. "Flowers" doesn't go anywhere, its chorus maintaining the same no-go goop groove that its verses offer. Not stuck in your head but just plain stuck, a voice circles. [2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: So labored in its delivery that the message starts to make sense. Yes, I start to think, the sluggish melody has the semblance of pushing through pain. And then those harmonies arrive to shove the Inspiration down your throat. I don't like self-love when it's obnoxious. [3]

Ian Mathers: One of the few faint silver linings of TSJ gracefully exiting the stage is I thought I'd never have to reveal certain shameful secrets once I wasn't writing about certain pop stars. But I have to face up to it: I just don't enjoy Miley Cyrus's voice. It's a perfectly fine voice! And I'm not talking about her performance or anything. There's just something about the timbre of her voice that doesn't work for me. I've never exactly striven for the illusion of objectivity in these blurbs (C'mon. C'mon!), but I admit I've caught myself humming the chorus here enough that I'm trying not to hold my irrational and visceral dislike of Cyrus singing against it. [6]

Jonathan Bradley: As she's grown older, Miley's grainy voice has gathered more charm and personality, not qualities it had been lacking in her youth -- even as a Disney Channel actor she evinced a sharp sense of performance savvy and comic timing. She's also learned that the public will punish her if she gets too outré, which is why her big hit of 2023 was a song of low-key melancholia colored by gestures towards independence that resonate faintly without being at all disruptive. No one's ever going to be troubled if she buys her own bouquet. The result is this year's answer to "Cold Heart": a song catchy enough to become omnipresent and wan enough to quickly wear out its welcome. [4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Honestly if we had reviewed this when it came out I'd probably be a few points higher on it -- but everything that seemed charming here upon first listen has faded with time. That disco groove feels stiffer and more focus-grouped the more times it loops, Miley's insouciance has morphed to laziness, and that Bruno Mars quote has lost what little cleverness it had to begin with. What remains is a thoroughly under-written event single, a nothing of a song in the vague outline of a hit. [2]

Alex Clifton: I've heard this song so many times and I can easily hum it, but I can't remember any lyrics beyond "I can buy myself flowers/write my name in the sand." Am I just bad at paying attention? I mean, kind of, but I think it speaks to how I view Cyrus's work overall: really catchy, memorable melodies, but weak lyrics that wash away. It's a shame as it's a neat hook, but acts as a six-second intrusive thought, built more for bite-sized consumption. Added a point because I will never be able to buy flowers again without thinking of this song, in much the same way that my brain automatically turns to Katy Perry whenever I see plastic bags. [6]

Leah Isobel: Arid guitars, parched Miley vocals, lyrics so terse they might as well be mirages: this is global warming pop. So when she says "I can buy myself flowers," it's not just aspirational in the sense of being over someone's bullshit; it's aspirational in the sense that flowers will someday cost as much as a house in Malibu. [5]

Nortey Dowuona: It's a little surprising that Miley Cyrus is now a respectable pop singer who makes convincing country pop, mainly cuz for a while she was off following her own weird muse into any direction and making albums with her Dead Petz and singing with Lil Nas X. But now she's making conventional guitar pop with either neatly mixed drums or very lively drum programming that launch each chorus into a brightly lit croon that lights up at the tail end, Miley's last searing "than you can" lingering before the song ebbs and stops. And it's a little surprising because it's actually pretty good. (It ain't Slide Away tho.) [8]

Brad Shoup: I'm more appreciative of ballads than I used to be, and a disco ballad is a great change of pace. Miley is aiming this at the dive bar; there's no show-stopping bit, just a constant smolder goosed by guitar and electric piano. (The strings should've gotten to sob a little!) When the high-stepping chorus comes in all I can think of is "When I Was Your Man": partly the melody, partly the flowers. [7]

Taylor Alatorre: I don't know whether the thing about "When I Was Your Man" being one of Liam Hemsworth's favorite songs is just a cop-out to avoid having to pay royalties to the Smeezingtons, but Miley doesn't seem very determined to disprove that theory here. Her unbothered, above-it-all delivery could stand to be a little more bothered, and parts of the song's structure are just plain frustrating, like the stubborn, senseless pause that precedes every chorus and forces its already-limited stock of momentum to restart back at zero. The wobbly contours of Miley's voice are arresting enough to prevent a complete collapse of listener interest, but it's hard to fashion a convincing portrait of liberated selfhood out of an earlier song that's built on woeful penitence. [4]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Miley's music as of late has evolved to genuinely interesting places steeped in introspection and authenticity. It's a disappointment, then, that "Flowers" is the biggest hit she's had in years. It retreads ground she's covered in a format that can only be described as maudlin, drab, and too on-the-nose. [4]

Jeffrey Brister: I don't listen to terrestrial radio, like, ever. Haven't in years. All of my music consumption comes exclusively from RSS feeds, social media, and hallowed sites like the one you're reading right now. My only exposure to "what's on the radio" is in segments of seconds as my wife's alarm goes off, notes wafting from a tinny speaker at a progressively louder volume. In those moments, immediately after waking, I'm groggy and confused, unable to form higher level thoughts. This particular song has been a part of that ritual of gaining awareness, and every single time it has come on, my first truly coherent thought is, "man, this Lady Gaga song is not good." [3]

Katherine St Asaph: I know that after the "Blurred Lines" case songwriters reportedly got paranoid about receiving vibes-based lawsuits and started changing or crediting anything that even kind of sounds like another famous song, but is that even true? Have they stopped? Because this is just Cher's "Strong Enough." [5]

Scott Mildenhall: Clever writing, textually appropriate plagiarism and memorable melodies -- but while these flowers are neatly arranged, that just means they've been dispassionately stuffed into a panel. Perhaps it sounded better on first listen, but at this stage it's flaural wallpaper. [7]

Alfred Soto: After a flop album that I enjoyed, Miley Cyrus returned with -- what exactly? Why and how "Flowers" resonated for millions in the first half of 2023 baffles me. Her nasal Stevie Nicks-indebted goat-warble is its own attraction, the hook is pretty good, and... well, what? Combine her timbre with the line "I can buy myself flowers" and presto -- a yearbook quote if yearbooks existed. [7]

David Moore: I'm a digital download pump-priming truther, so I guess if the alternative is fascists getting to #1 for a week or two I'll take a full calendar year's slow and steady drip of Miley's mids as a form of pop chart harm reduction. And this is one of those songs like Bebe Rexha's "Last Hurrah" that I appreciate the personal connection to without it affecting my sense of how dumb it is. My youngest really likes this one! We both laugh about the part where she says she could talk to herself for hours (that seems weird!), and he is fascinated by the idea that writing your name in the sand is something that people who are dating might do, because he also likes to write things in sand and does not yet fully understand dating, but he did, unbeknownst to me, download an app on his tablet to practice kissing, and he also downloaded a "love app" and correctly noted that in one picture the two people are in love with each other even though she's his crush, which means technically she shouldn't love him back (he's six... to her credit, Miley Cyrus has always deeply understood six-year-olds, the low end of her old Radio Disney demo). And hey, speaking of Bebe Rexha and endearing constitutional midness, isn't it kind of funny that the one person in the world worse at being a pop star than Miley Cyrus happened to put out the best Miley Cyrus song of the year and no one cared? They should have paid for more digital downloads! [5]

Will Adams: EDITOR'S NOTE: To prevent attracting attention from Ms. Cyrus' passionate fanbase, this review has been amended for the writer's protection. Ten years on from being a twerk-pop provocateur, Miley has firmly cemented her status as a C-list an A-list pop star who releases some of the most boring iconic music put to tape. From the zen lite-rock of "Malibu" to the shiny-leather pop of "Midnight Sky" to the disco of "Flowers," it seems she's never always had anything something interesting to say, no matter the outfit. Perhaps that's what helped "Flowers" become Spotify's most streamed song globally this year: it sounds like nothing everything. The arrangement is terminally limp serve. The self-love imagery is beyond basic vivid. Miley pushes her voice as usual, but with such staid slay surroundings, the song's failure legend behavior becomes that much more apparent; the flowers have already wilted outsold Ariana. [3]

Michelle Myers: Personhood is fundamentally lonesome, and we should all seek ways to break free from ourselves. Dance, drink, laugh, make music together. Make music that isn't boring nu-disco! You can buy yourself flowers, but a dandelion from someone who loves you means so much more. [3]

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