Everything’s coming up billions for Miley Cyrus. The singer is celebrating the news that her fifth video has crossed the one billion views mark on YouTube. The latest track to reach that hallowed height is Miley’s 2013 lead Bangerz single “We Can’t Stop,” the party-starting anthem written and produced by Mike Will Made It, P-Nasty and R. City, with additional lyrics from the singer and a sample of Doug E. Fresh’s hip -hop classic “La Di Da Di.”
The turn-up tune topped out at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 at the time of release, notably blocked from No. 1 by Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” — Cyrus and Thicke would perform a legendarily raunchy, suggestive medley of their respective hit songs at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards.
Despite some grumbling about the suggestive content of the “We Can’t Stop” clip at the time from critics struggling to wrap their heads around the then-21-year-old Disney star’s transition from kid-friendly pop singer to hip-hop adjacent provocateur, the video blew up right away. It set a record at the time on Vevo for most views in the first 24 hours, then another record after getting hitting Vevo Certified status for 100 million views in just over a month for a visual Billboard described at the time as “subversive, mesmerizing and unhinged.”
The Diane Martel-directed video definitely painted Cyrus in a whole different light. Wearing golden grillz and writhing on a bed in a white bra and hot pants, it finds the singer surrounded by friends who eat sandwiches made out of $100 bills, building french fry skulls, twerking and butt-slapping, pretending to slice off their fingers and dirty dancing with giant teddy bears.
From scenes of Miley in a fishnet bathing suit making out with a doll wearing a similar outfit to the singer smashing a giant beer bottle piñata filled with hot dogs and winking drug references to “dancing with Molly”, the loud and proud debauchery finds its thesis statement in the refrain, “And we can’t stop/ And we won’t stop/ We run things they don’t run we/ Don’t take nothing from nobody.”
Cyrus had previously crossed the one-billion views mark with 2013’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Wrecking Ball,” as well as 2009’s “Party in the U.S.A.,” 2013’s “23” with Mike WiLL Made-It, Wiz Khalifa and Juicy J and her other No. 1 hit, 2023’s “Flowers.”
Watch the “We Can’t Stop” video below.
