🎵 Weekly Music Newsletter: Miley Cyrus & Shakira are Petty Queens

Miley Cyrus returns. Shakira x Bizarrap. Offset’s first song since Takeoff’s death. Margo Price’s country album. New Paramore.

Last week was a sad week for music. We lost Jeff Beck, Lisa Marie Presley, Robbie Bachman, and Yukihiro Takahashi. Jeff Beck was rock’s quiet guitar god, a member of The Yardbirds, and a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. Relive his 1999 performance of What Mama Said on the Late Show here.

Click here for a Spotify playlist with the songs mentioned in this article.

BIGGEST Songs of the Week 📈

Last month, Lana Del Rey made one billboard, and one billboard only, to promote her upcoming album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, and she posted it in Tulsa Oklahoma, the hometown of her ex-boyfriend. Petty behavior must be in the air because Miley Cyrus and Shakira are now taking digs at their ex’s too.

Miley’s new single, Flowers, her first proper song since 2020, was conveniently dropped on ex-husband Liam Hemsworth’s 33rd birthday. The song addresses the pair’s failed marriage and uses their Malibu home, which burned down in 2018, as a metaphor for their relationship. Flowers interpolates lyrics from Bruno Mars’ 2012 hit When I Was Your Man, but instead of singing “I should’ve bought you flowers and held your hand,” Miley aptly sings, “I can buy myself flowers / I can hold my own hand.”

Despite Miley’s petty attempts to wound her ex, her efforts appear trivial when compared to Shakira’s. On Shakira: BZRP Music Sessions, Vol. 53, the latest installment of Latin trap producer Bizarrap’s viral YouTube music series, the Colombian singer demonstrates zero restraint. The 45-year-old ruthlessly attacks her ex-husband, soccer star Gerard Piqué, and his 22-year-old girlfriend, Clara Chía. “I’m worth two 22’s / You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo / You traded a Rolex for a Casio,” she sings. Elsewhere, Shakira mocks Piqué’s intelligence and airs his dirty laundry, including his 2019 tax fraud case.

Sonically, both songs are generic and fail to live up to either artist’s star power, hence the tabloid fodder.