Miley Cyrus appeared on a Scandinavian talk show on Monday (Nov. 2) to promote her upcoming album and speak out about how the coronavirus pandemic has made life anything but a party in the U.S.A. during 2020.
The topic came up when the host of the Oslo, Norway-based chat show Skavlan asked the pop star if she agreed with Madonna’s controversial comments earlier this year that the global health crisis was the “great equalizer.”
“I don’t agree with that,” Cyrus told Fredrik Skavlan. “I think that we’ve seen more divide recently than I have in my lifetime, just because we are really understanding the division between race and wealth, and that wealth and health can actually be the same thing. And I think that’s unfathomably wrong and that is why our election is so important. So no, I don’t believe COVID has been an equalizer in any way.”
During the interview, the singer also opened up about the inspiration behind her new single “Midnight Sky,” revealing that the track’s opening verse came from a particularly wild night out at a club before the pandemic hit.
“I went to take a photo and I realized it was on selfie mode. And I had been sweating and dancing and my eyelashes are stuck to my face…Everyone looked equally as horrible because we had been dancing for like four hours,” she mused. “It was a total mistake, I was scarred, but it did end up inspiring a song that I’m proud of.”
“Midnight Sky” serves as the lead single for Cyrus’s upcoming seventh album Plastic Hearts, which is set to be released Nov. 27 via RCA Records. In addition to her original music, the studio set will also feature the singer’s recent live covers of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and The Cranberries’ “Zombie” from the iHeart Festival and the NIVA Save Our Stage Festival, respectively.
Watch Miley’s full appearance on Skavlan below.