Miley Cyrus is about to release her new album Something Beautiful in just over a week. Before its arrival, she’s been reflecting on the key changes that brought her to this point, such as taking control of her sobriety and receiving a Grammy for her hit “Flowers.”
In an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 published on May 21, Cyrus shared how removing substances from her life transformed everything and helped her reach new heights with Endless Summer Vacation. “I’ve learned this about myself over the years,” she told Lowe. “The sobriety is like, that’s like my God. I need it, I live for it. I mean that it’s changed my entire life.”
She also spoke honestly about how her earlier effort at sobriety, around the release of her 2020 album Plastic Hearts, didn’t go well. “I know I needed to fall one more time,” she explained. “I just, I had to. It just never would have happened this way. I just never would have been sitting here. There were times in that section … I’m not proud of them. Definitely not my best moments, not some of my best work, any of that. But it all led me to writing ‘Flowers,’ which then was some sort of key right into the lock of all healing.”
“Flowers,” which came out in 2023 as the lead single from Endless Summer Vacation, held the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 for eight weeks — outperforming her previous No. 1 hit “Wrecking Ball,” which topped the chart for three weeks in 2013. The song earned Cyrus her first Grammy Awards: Best Pop Solo Performance and Record of the Year at the 2024 ceremony.
Cyrus told Lowe that receiving the Grammys felt just as healing as writing and sharing the song. “I think somewhere inside of me, I needed maybe to hold a trophy and just feel for a moment that I have something that I can hold in my hands that feels like a true achievement,” she explained. “And so at the Grammys, that’s why I went, it was actually for healing.”
She revealed that she almost didn’t attend the ceremony due to extreme performance anxiety and an internal reluctance to admit how much winning mattered to her.
“There was somewhere that I was avoiding this, the fact that it did matter to me somewhere,” she shared. “And so once I received my Grammy, I was like, look, when you Google me, it says ‘Miley Cyrus, a Grammy Award-winning artist.’”
On May 30, Cyrus will release Something Beautiful, her ninth studio album. It features singles such as “More to Lose,” “End of the World,” “Prelude,” and the title track. A visual film for the album will also be released in theaters for one night in June.
Two days before her Apple Music interview, Cyrus revealed the album’s full tracklist, including collaborations with Brittany Howard and Naomi Campbell.
Watch Cyrus’ full Zane Lowe interview below.
