It seems as though an eternity has passed since Justin Timberlake came out with the jilted from the male perspective anthem that was 2002’s “Cry Me A River.” Since then, there’s been no shortage of flow from women scorned who have made some decent money off their pain in the form of a “you’re an asshole who fucked me over” anthem. Not that there isn’t validity in each and every one of these tracks, for, make no mistake, a man will sell you down the river he’s supposedly crying if it means a wetter pussy elsewhere. And, to this point of water-image based songs of heartbreak, the latest (once again, from a female) is called “Slide Away” by Miley Cyrus.
Fresh from a separation from Liam Hemsworth (who she’s no stranger to calling things off with by this time), the song is a pointed response–as most pop singers have learned to do from Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande, who, in turn latently learned it from Madonna’s Like A Prayer album–to the pain of this wound. And is diametrically opposed to another recently released track from She Is Coming called “The Most.” Then again, perhaps there were more than a few signs of a rift to come in lyrics like, “And even when I can’t stay, even when I run away/You love me the most/So why do I hurt you so, is it ’cause I know you love me the most?” On the note of always hurting the ones we love, Cyrus’ decision to release a song about the breakup so quickly after the separation (even Ariana waited slightly longer with “thank u, next” post-Pete Davidson) has to be a bit of salt in the wound for Hemsworth. Salt of which he must already get plenty of in the Australian ocean Miley makes reference to with the resigned demand, “So won’t you slide away?/Back to the ocean, I’ll go back to the city lights.”
With an intro that sounds more than vaguely inspired by the one to Pearl Jam’s “I Can Feel It Coming Back Again” (and one wouldn’t put this past Miley with her recent dabbling in reinterpreting 90s alt rock as Ashely O from Black Mirror), she transitions into a lyrical tone that is both lamenting but accepting of the notion that her inability to let go of what this person once meant to her when she was seventeen is only holding her back in the present (it rather bears similarities to the motifs on Charli XCX and Sky Ferreira’s also recent breakup single, “Cross You Out“). As for the ever-ebbing and flowing emotions of Miley’s choppy emotional waters, it is she herself who told Vanity Fair this year, “When people hear my music they hear a fragment of time, something I feel or felt right then. By the time it gets to your ears I may have grown past it, but I am truest to who I am at that very second.” But oh how quickly the seconds can pass when one has unlimited resources to spend them as she pleases. As was the case when she jetted off to the cliche celebrity getaway hub that is Lake Como with Kaitlynn Carter, only known for being attached to the family of mutants called the Kardashian-Jenners by way of being the now ex-wife of Brody Jenner.
Apparently feeling invigorated by both the separation and the fresh Northern Italian mountain air, Miley captioned one of her vacation photos with the revelation, “Don’t fight evolution, because you will never win. Like the mountain I am standing on top of, which was once under water, connected with Africa, change is inevitable. The Dolomites were not created over night, it was over millions of years that this magnificent beauty was formed. My dad always told me ‘Nature never hurries but it is always on time’…it fills my heart with peace and hope KNOWING that is true. I was taught to respect the planet and its process and I am committed to doing the same with my own…” Fittingly, Ariana Grande responded to the caption with the comment, “i love you.” Because, to be sure, female pop singers must stand together in solidarity in this phenomenon called the breakup song. It’s what half the foundation of pop music is built upon (the other being the falling in love song). It’s just that every now and again, it would be nice if these women could get together for a songwriting session implementing the Bechdel test. What’s more, since clearly very few men feel half as comfortable talking about their relationship demise in pop music these days (despite Justin still being overtly obsessed with Britney), it only seems that these types of songs lend all the more power to men and how they serve as a woman’s entire world. The only subject she could possibly have to discuss. Maybe that element could “slide away” just ever so slightly as we, in turn, slide into 2020.
