Like Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus Is Processing Her Break Up Publicly With Her New Song – But Why?

It used to be that we would only understand a musicians painful break-up years after the fact. They would suffer an all-consuming event in their love life and a year later, we’d have an album filled with love songs. Adele, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé – plenty of our favourite artists have made entire careers off of this phenomenon. But this year, break-up anthems are changing.

It started with Ariana Grande, who released the infamous ‘thank u, next’ a couple of weeks after her split from ex-fiancé Pete Davidson. Now, Miley Cyrus is following suit – releasing her new track Slide Away just days after her divorce from Liam Hemsworth was made public.

As details about their split take a nasty turn from the heartfelt statement Liam released earlier this week, Miley’s new song is illuminating – and seems to confirm a lot of what has been rumoured about why their relationship ended, at least from her side.

‘I want my house in the hills, Don't want the whiskey and pills, I don’t give up easily, But I don't think I'm down,’ she sings, ‘Move on, we're not 17, I'm not who I used to be, You say that everything changed, You're right, we're grown now’

According to TMZ, sources from Miley’s camp said the relationship ended because she couldn’t accept his heavy drinking and use of ‘certain drugs’. However, Liam’s camp reportedly hit back denying drug allegations and stating that Miley had actually cheated on him.

As the split continues to play out in the public eye, it seems that Miley also wants to process her breakup publicly with the release of Slide Away. But why? While many artists share their emotional turmoil through music, typically they seem to give themselves much longer to process and create the art before sharing it with the world.

Of course, in taking the time to curate an entire album, that does mean they are then performing the songs years after the initial break-up - which we’ve seen from artists like Perrie Edwards of Little Mix and Ariana Grande (who have both broken down while performing love songs about exes) can be painful to continue living through.

Perhaps there’s value in creating art through pain and immediately putting it out to the world without an album necessarily to go with it, which may force continued performances of said song. Because, if we’ve learnt anything from the likes of Taylor and Ariana, continuing to work while suffering emotionally, or processing trauma with music, can be a great tool to help.

However, both of them have too shared how painful that can be. In fact, Taylor once advised Selena Gomez not to get ‘too personal’ with her break-up anthems, after the singer recorded a song that featured an emotional voicemail from Justin Bieber back in 2013 (it was removed before the song – Love Will Remember - was released to the public).

If anything is true of Miley’s new song – and Ariana’s earlier this year – it’s that they’re very, very personal. Name-checking exes and exposing drug use, while sharing this information now might seem useful when you’re dealing with the whirlwind of emotions post-break-up, it does seem like something an artist may one day regret if it ultimately causes harm to the person they were once in love with.

Of course, we can never know how or why releasing break-up songs so quickly can be helpful to the artist creating them. What it does do though, is give us unprecedented insight into the relationship and ultimately fuel a lot of interest in it. Maybe that’s why artists have typically waited for so long to share their private lives – who cares about Taylor’s love song for Jake Gyllenhaal once she’s spotted strolling around wearing Harry Styles necklace?

Ultimately, it does seem to be a 2019 trend to process emotional turmoil more publicly. And hey, if Miley is happy giving us all the goss on her split with Liam, who are we to judge?

Read more: All of the best memes following the release of thank u, next