Miley Cyrus

Lore & Background

The collaboration between Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa on "Prisoner" was not the first song they worked on together. In an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Cyrus said they had worked on other songs together in the past and praised Lipa: 'For her and I, there's just no competition. That changes just everything. There's a true partnership. Then I also liked that it wasn't the first song we'd cut together. We actually cut other songs. She wanted to keep going until it was right, until we found the one that honors our individuality.'

In 2025, Cyrus revealed on the Every Single Album podcast that the collaboration wasn't her idea, adding the song 'isn't cohesive with the album'. Cyrus said Lipa's involvement was at the insistence of her record label at the time, who she claims was not pleased with the direction of the album. She felt a Lipa collaboration would have been more appropriate for her follow-up album, Endless Summer Vacation (2023). The music video features the singers driving a tour bus and draws references to the films The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Female Trouble. The song draws influence from and references Olivia Newton-John's 1981 single 'Physical'. Earlier in 2020, the track was already sampled by Dua Lipa in her own song, also called 'Physical'.

Reader's Guide

To understand "Prisoner", listen for its dark pop, disco-punk, disco-rock, glam rock and nu-disco sound. The song has a length of two minutes and forty nine seconds, composed in the key of E♭ minor with a moderately-fast tempo of 126–132 beats per minute. Cyrus' and Lipa's vocals range from the low note of B♭3 to the high note of C♯5. The lyrics relate to angst inspired by isolation feelings and were described by critics as a 'heartache anthem' and a 'glam declaration of independence'. The verse 'I try to replace it with the city lights' is an allusion to Cyrus' 2019 song 'Slide Away', about her separation from then-husband Liam Hemsworth. Another reference can be found in the pre-chorus where she sings 'You keep making it harder to stay', which is a contrast to the lyrics to her 2010 song 'Stay'. Critics gave the song mostly positive reviews. Ali Shutler of NME gave it five out of five stars, calling it 'a disco-punk anthem that goes off like a cherry bomb'. However, The Guardian's Alexis Petridis compared it unfavorably to its music video, opining it is 'far less interesting than its blood-spattered, spider-eating, John Waters-quoting video'. The song was engineered at Gold Tooth Music in Los Angeles and Glenwood Studios in Burbank, California.