One week before Miley Cyrus unleashes her new album, Plastic Hearts, she and Dua Lipa took no “prisoners” in their new, explosive collaboration. In “Prisoner,” Miley, 27, and Dua, 25, get down in dirty (in both meanings of the word). While en route to a concert on a party bus, Miley showers herself in crimson blood, and Dua even takes a lick of the vampire sustenance — right off Miley’s face.
The rest of the music video is equally intimate as Miley and Dua unleash their wild sides. The video is a tribute to the glam rock era of the ’80s that’s so uninhibited, so eccentric, Billy Idol would be proud (whom, FYI, is a featured artist on Miley’s upcoming album). It’s clear that Miley and Dua are fed up with being a “locked up” in the shackles to their respective lovers. The music video and powerful ode is yet another entry into Miley’s new rock canon that she has been building in the wake of her split from Liam Hemsworth and Cody Simpson!
Plastic Hearts arrives on Nov. 27. It’s Miley’s first album since 2017’s Younger Now, and the first major release since 2019’s She Is Coming. Miley’s new album is a star-studded affair, and she first hinted at her team-up with Dua while speaking with New Zealand’s The Edge radio in mid-September. After saying she had a song that sounded like if “Britney [Spears] and Trent [Reznor] had a song together,” she got serious. “You guys think I’m joking, like Britney and Nine Inch Nails, but I’m not, I’ve got Billy Idol and Dua Lipa on the same record.” The collaboration was confirmed when she released the tracklisting for Plastic Hearts on Nov. 13, showing that she does have Dua, Billy and Joan Jett (“Bad Karma”) on the same album
The “Slide Away” singer also spoke about the collab with Dua during a conversation with Spanish Radio station Cadena 100, per NME. Miley called the team-up a “perfectly, a blend of the both of us. And I’m super proud of it and super excited for our fans to hear it because they been, like begging for it. Seriously. It’s all I ever hear from both of our [fanbases], that they want to hear the record that we’ve done together.” She also talked about the video. “We were both in New York and we ended up putting something together that I don’t want to give away too much about, but the fans can expect something pretty soon.”
In a preview of the video, Miley and Dua seemingly trashed a tour bus. The two go to town on a jar of maraschino cherries. Miley jiggles her breasts, there’s a shot of someone’s booty in a pair of fishnet stockings, and Miley got in her trademark tongue waggles. “I was crazy about making the tongue slide work,” she told Billboard about her signature gesture. “I was so embarrassed to be on the red carpet and so many of those fucking disgusting photographers would tell me to blow a kiss, and that’s not me! I don’t want to blow you a kiss. I didn’t know what to do with my face, so I stuck my tongue out, and it became a rebellious, punk-rock thing.”
Miley’s rebel streak has earned her the approval of the old vanguard of punk and metal, and one of her fans is none other than Judas Priest singer Rob Halford. After Miley revealed that she was working on a Metallica covers album, Rob told Matt Stocks on the Life In The Stocks podcast (h/t Louder) that he’s hyped to hear it.
“She is incredible,” said Halford. “If you think about her life in showbusiness from being a little kid, and how she’s kept her head on straight… She went a big mad as a teenager, which you should do, that’s your right, she was expressing herself. I can’t wait [to hear her Metallica covers album], that’s going to be great. She has an extraordinary voice, like [Lady] Gaga, the voice is everything, and she’s a metalhead, she’s always throwing the horns up. She’s someone I’d love to meet if the stars ever aligned.”