After days of teasers — the new route for high-profile musicians — Miley Cyrus has released her new single "Nothing Breaks Like a Heart." The song, a collaboration with DJ Mark Ronson, is an electro-pop anthem with a Dolly Parton groove. It's a natural fit for Cyrus, who started with country pop, then veered into hip hop, then into alt-rock, and emerged in 2017 with a bluegrass-tinged pop album titled Younger Now. Since Younger Now, Cyrus has been fairly quiet, appearing here and there to perform covers (like at the Grammys, where she sang "Tiny Dancer" with Elton John). This week, she started hinting that a new song was coming soon. It's here, it's noisy, and it feels like the natural culmination of Cyrus' previous work.
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Thanks to its video, "Nothing Breaks Like a Heart" is overtly political — also pretty normal for Cyrus, who was a vocal Clinton supporter during the 2016 election. The video is littered with references to modern strife. Framed by a televised "car chase" in the style of OJ Simpson, the video features children playing with bullets, a strip club filled with priests, and what looks like a rabid Black Friday shopping brawl. At one point, Cyrus drives past a row of football players kneeling, a clear reference to Colin Kaepernick's protests. At the very end of the video, Cyrus and Ronson emerge from a car crash and Cyrus...stands with her hands outstretched, Jesus Christ-style.
Watch the full video, below.