Behind Miley Cyrus’ Smash Hit ‘Flowers’: ‘She’s Not Afraid to Go After What She Wants’

variety.com:

Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer Turning points arenothing new for Miley Cyrus, who reinvents herself with nearly every album cycle.

But 2023 truly represented a new chapter. She was with a new label — Columbia — and had moved over to Crush Management, where co-founder Jonathan Daniel took the reins on overseeing her career.

During album sessions at Los Angeles’ Sunset Sound, co-writers Michael Pollack and Gregory “Aldae” Hein recorded a demo with Cyrus for “Flowers” as a melancholy piano ballad. “She wanted to strip down to the essence of a song rather than writing to a track,” explains Daniel, who says Cyrus had amassed about 20 songs for the album by the time he began working with her in August 2021. “More than anyone else involved, she was really headstrong about it feeling right to her.” The demo was sent around to various producers before Cyrus touched base with Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, Hitmakers 2022 Producers of the Year, who helmed the entirety of Harry Styles’ Grammy-winning 2022 album “Harry’s House.” Cyrus had worked with the team on another song from the resulting “Endless Summer Vacation” album, and she reached back out to the pair after hearing what they did on a track from rapper Kevin Abstract.

At Harpoon’s Laurel Canyon studio, the three were finishing up a day’s work when they decided to jam on “Flowers,” with Harpoon on bass, Johnson on keys and Cyrus on vocals. “What I love about Miley is she’s so creative and all her references, it’s not like she comes in and picks, I want to sound like this band or this record,” says Harpoon. “A lot of the times she’ll be like, ‘I want to sound like this Gucci dress, or this Dolce & Gabbana thing from 1982 that I found’ or ‘I love this piece of art’.