In another instance of naming a song too similarly to (read: exactly the same as) someone else’s, Miley Cyrus has challenged The Weeknd’s own “Prisoner” featuring Lana “Summertime” Del Rey with hers, featuring Dua Lipa (because a song called “Prisoner” apparently needs a collaborator for a sort of “warden” complement). This seems to have an underpinning meaning when taking into account that Cyrus has opted for NY as a backdrop for her video. The Weeknd’s “Prisoner” came out in 2015, the end of an era (because the Orange One “won” the election the following year) Cyrus seems to attempt re-creating with her latest visual offering. Opening with the repetition of the word three times, it sounds a lot like Laura Branigan’s intonation of “Gloria”–but then, Miley is no stranger to extrapolating intonations, especially if they were popular during the early 80s.“Off my mind” and “million times” repeated the same way also add to un certain homage to “Gloria”–albeit more “rock n’ roll”-ified, as that is Cyrus’ current flavor.
Hence being joined on a tour bus with Lipa where things in the back are decidedly “innocent” à la Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone in Aerosmith’s “Crazy” video before the scenario devolves into the two rubbing blood red cherries and their “juices” (the cherries’ juices, not the pops singers’) all over themselves. It’s here that it bears noting that Cyrus “co-directed” the video with 24-year-old photographer Alana O’Herlihy, proclaimed “racy artist” best known for her fashion photoshoots with the likes of Bella Hadid. Thus, the “grungy” aesthetic of it all (well, as “grungy” as a 24-year-old living in 2020’s interpretation of grunge can be) is to be expected. That’s precisely why the video opens with a fly buzzing its last words before a swatter smacks it with a resounding whomp, spreading blood all over the place that foreshadows the aforementioned cherry juice. A pulsing heart with the initials “MC x DL” then appears before Miley’s mouth does–singing the lyrics while superimposed over visuals of cloudy skies, chain link fences and pretty much any fuckery she and Lipa are getting into.
On that note, it’s clear Miley wants to live up to (once again) the “Midnight Sky” depiction, “See my lips on her mouth, everybody’s talking now, baby/Ooh, you know it’s true,” as she gets all dominant over her kiss with Lipa. After all, Cyrus must maintain her pansexual street cred. As well as some Ozzy Osbourne cachet as she eats a spider from its web (granted, that’s not quite as “rock n’ roll” as biting a bat’s head off). Stabbing a teddy bear seems the cruelest act of all, however.
When the bus pulls up to a New York of the past (for that’s what everything feels like now, with the pandemic restrictions), a screaming fan awaits outside the venue. While O’Herlihy likely never made it to a now folkloric bar called Wreck Room because she was a still a zygote when it closed in 2014, choosing a Disney-fied version of a “dive” in the form of the East Village’s Double Down Saloon feels appropriate. A Las Vegas import that has drawn its fair share of “young upwardly-mobile professionals,” everything about the bar has a sense of being designed to be filmed in order to portray a version of the city that doesn’t actually exist anymore. Just as Wreck Room doesn’t–and though it might have provided the more “authentic” vibe Cyrus would have liked, her filming there, by definition, would have stripped any such authenticity, so perhaps it’s for the best that it is as defunct as the rest of the city–try as Los Angeles traitor O’Herlihy might to assure, “New York is the ONLY place to live for anyone who is an artist, wants to work in the arts, fashion, or anything of that world.” How quaint a notion.
After this exterior shot of the Double Down, the two enter what the untrained eye is supposed to assume is a “dingy nightclub,” at which time stock effects that can be found on various apps (including the kaleidoscope one that O’Herlihy is fond of using) are wielded to stylize their performance in between Cyrus pulling her fishnets apart on her backside and the duo staring inside of a screaming mouth from the perspective of whoever’s boca it might be in the crowd. When the music stops, the crowd cheers as Lipa flips them off and the screen cuts to a title card that reads: “In loving memory of all my exes. Eat shit.” The same goes for New York itself when inevitably viewed as an ex.
