Decoding the Lyrics in Miley Cyrus' Younger Now Album

May 2024 · 4 minute read

1. "Younger Now"

Cyrus embraces her past while acknowledging change is inevitable and necessary. "Feels like I just woke up / Like all this time I've been asleep / Even though it's not who I am / I'm not afraid of who I used to be," the former Disney Channel star sings in the first verse. In the second verse, the singer-songwriter sings, "Feels like I've been living in a dream / But never make it to the end / My eyes open when they feel the light / It's always right before I'm about to scream."

"I think when you are a teenager, young adult, you're trying so hard to be cool or to prove something or to be something away from who you've been as a kid," Cyrus explained in a Sept. 24 interview with NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. "And I guess as I've gotten older—what 'Younger Now' says is, 'Even though it's not who I am / I'm not afraid of who I used to be.'"

2. "Malibu"

In her ode to fiancé Liam Hemsworth, whom she met on the set of the 2010 movie The Last Song, Cyrus sings, "I never came to the beach, or stood by the ocean / I never sat by the shore, under the sun with my feet in the sand / But you brought me here and I'm happy that you did."

The song's chorus reflects on her life with the actor in—you guessed it—Malibu. "But here I am, next to you / The sky's more blue in Malibu," Cyrus sings. "Next to you in Malibu / Next to you."

"They're going to talk about me if I come out of a restaurant with Liam," she told Billboard earlier this year. "Why not put the power back in my relationship and say, 'This is how I feel?'"

3. "Rainbowland" (feat. Parton)        

"Livin' in a rainbowland / Where you and I go hand in hand / Oh, I'd be lyin' (I'd be lyin'), if I said this was fine / All the hurt and the hate going on here (hate going on here)," the pop princess and her Grammy-winning godmother sing in the track's chorus. "We are rainbows, me and you / Every color, every hue / Let's shine through / Together we can start livin' in a rainbowland."

"One line is such a Dolly lyric," Cyrus said of her "political" collaboration in NME's Sept. 29 issue. "It says, 'We are rainbows, me and you / Every color, every hue.' And it's about all these different races and genders and religions, if we all did come together to create and said, 'Hey, we're different; that's awesome! Let's not change to be the same. Let's stay different but let's come together anyway.' Because a rainbow's not a rainbow without all the different colors."

4. "Week Without You"

Inspired by her second major breakup with Hemsworth, Cyrus sings, "If I spent a week without you / Bet you'd wonder what I'd do / I think that I'd start goin' out / Get caught kissin' other dudes / And it seems you just want to bring me down, down / With your bad attitude (bad attitude) / When you know I'm not one to keep dealin' with the s--t / That you put me through."

In the bitter chorus, Cyrus tells her fiancé, "I know that I gave you my heart / But you stomped it to the ground / And that's what's got me wondering what it's like / To not have you around."

Today, Cyrus and Hemsworth are in a happier, healthier place. "I think people who break up and get back together, that's awesome. You get time to be yourself," she told SiriusXM in May. "You get time to grow up. I think if you're growing up attached to another person, you never really get solid as your own being. So, I'm really solid, and then he gets to be really solid. And together, we get to be two really grounded people. It's not a half and a half making a whole."

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