This 2013 Miley Cyrus Hit Was Originally Meant for Another Huge Artist, and I Can’t Help but Think About What Could Have Been
· Vice
Miley Cyrus technically made her post-Disney debut in 2010 with Can’t Be Tamed. But her 2013 resurgence really put a much finer point on the separation. Cyrus left Disney-owned Hollywood Records that year to sign with RCA Records, and Bangerz dropped later in October.
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And of course, there was the infamous MTV VMAs performance two months earlier. Overall, these were the pop culture moments that solidified Cyrus as an artist and a young woman beyond Hannah Montana. Bangerz was a turbulent era for sure, and not everyone was ready for Miley Cyrus to embrace her maturity and sexuality. This reluctance to allow child stars to grow up has been happening for ages.
I don’t Even Want to Think About What the Pop Culture Landscape Would Look Like if Miley Cyrus Never Released “We Can’t Stop”
Somehow, it seems to happen more often for young women in pop music who started with Disney. We saw it with Miley Cyrus and with Sabrina Carpenter in her last couple of album cycles.
Correlation-causation arguments aside, Miley Cyrus certainly came in like a wrecking ball when she dropped Bangerz, and it’s hard to imagine current pop culture without it. But it came very close to being totally different, because the lead single, “We Can’t Stop”, was originally written for another artist.
When “We Can’t Stop” came out, the lyrics and visuals earned mixed reviews from critics. The consensus was that it was definitely catchy and infectious, but also a little lethargic for a party song. The Los Angeles Times wrote that the song “seems as if it were written by a ninth-grader imagining her rebellious college sister’s lifestyle.”
Still, Cyrus made it clear at the time that “We Can’t Stop” was “exactly what I wanted, and exactly what I wanted my first sound to be, and my first look to be.” But for all that it turned out to be perfect, it wasn’t originally written with her in mind.
Rihanna’s Pass On “We Can’t Stop” Was Miley Cyrus’ Gain
“When I originally worked on ‘We Can’t Stop,’ we had did it for Rihanna. The idea was more towards Rihanna,” said producer Mike Williams, known as Mike Will Made It, in 2013. He brought both “We Can’t Stop” and “Pour It Up” to Rihanna roughly a year before, and Rihanna had a clear favorite.
“She heard ‘Pour It Up’ right away, and she didn’t even hear ‘We Can’t Stop’,” said Williams of Rihanna. Had she taken a liking to “We Can’t Stop”, the result probably would have been totally different. Obviously, she and Cyrus are two completely different artists, even if they have traveled in similar pop music circles.
Rihanna would probably not have gone in a ‘baby’s first Hollywood Hills mansion party’ direction
She would most likely have garnered different visual comparisons. Cyrus’ video was likened to Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance”, Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty”, and Fiona Apple’s “Criminal”.
In any case, Rihanna released “Pour It Up” on her 2012 album Unapologetic, which Williams helped produce. Once he was done there, he met with Miley Cyrus, who Sony felt would be “perfect” for the rejected single.
“They played [‘We Can’t Stop’] for her, she liked it, so I thought we were just gonna knock out one record,” said Williams. “But we ended up going in and caught a good vibe. She’s real cool, a regular person.”
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