Pop Tart: Miley Cyrus’ new single is QAnon for musical tweens

Welcome to Pop Tart, our rundown of what’s scorching hot in the world of pop culture – from movies to memes, and books to fresh looks.

Miley Cyrus and the Ex Complex

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a Disney Channel star in want of global fame must release a new revenge track. Gen-Z icons Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Olivia Rodrigo have all used the House of Mouse to chart their path to super stardom, but when it comes to heartbreak anthems, Cyrus is looking to take the crown.

As Flowers, the first track from Cyrus’ next studio album (due for release in March) dropped, the internet lost its mind over the many, many conspiracy theories about the music video’s meaning and the significance of her lyrics.

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* Listen: Zac Efron’s blonde phase, Miley Cyrus M.I.A., plus more from this week’s Nightly Pop the podcast
* Miley Cyrus performs Old Town Road with Cody Simpson and dad Billy Ray Cyrus

This was QAnon for musical tweens, as fans claimed to find Easter eggs in every freeze-frame of Cyrus’ new video clip. It was a stunning riposte to her ex-husband, it was a sartorial statement about his abusive control, it was, according to one commentator, a memory lane tour through the exact locales where Liam Hemsworth’s rumoured affairs took place.

All may be fair in love and pop, but the level of conspiracy surrounding Cyrus’ “revenge track” took this maxim to a new level of delusion – suddenly, every tilt of Cyrus’ head is interpreted as a slight against her ex-husband.

There’s a fine line between being a perceptive pop-cultural sleuth, and being a paranoid, para-social obsessive, and launches like Cyrus’ Flowers show the boundary is more blurred than ever before.

Kim Kardashian: Tomb Raider? The diva buys Diana’s diamond cross necklace

This week, Kim Kardashian bought Princess Diana’s amethyst cross at auction. The 1920s luxury pendant was designed by jewellery designer Garrard, and worn on many occasions, according to the BBC.

This came less than a year after the reality TV star stepped out at the Met Gala wearing an iconic dress that really and truly once belonged to Marilyn Monroe – and the internet hadn’t forgotten, quickly

presenting her as a kind of luxury Lara Croft, raiding the different tombs of Old Hollywood.

The living famous now leverage dead famous people’s trinkets. It’s the ultimate brand affiliation (that their victims aren’t able to defend themselves against).

Hoping to become as iconic as Princess Diana, as notorious as Marilyn Monroe, Kardashian sets an alarming precedent. Will we see male influencers sporting van Gogh’s severed ear? Milan models wearing an actual Rothko down the catwalk? Kylie Jenner bathing in Cleopatra’s old bath milk?

Maybe Kardashian needs to follow Coco Chanel’s maxim – before you leave the house, take off one thing.

That one thing should be whatever dead celebrity’s doilies she’s stolen for the red carpet.

The internet shuts down Hollywood’s Amy Winehouse biopic film

While we’re on the topic of deceased celebrities having their estates raided, the first stills from Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Amy Winehouse biopic were leaked this week. The Internet has not been kind; on a scale of mild dislike to calling for a war crimes trial at The Hague, Winehouse stans were about to put the cast and directors in chains.

Fans have a clear message for the studio.

No, No, No.

We seem to be tiringof the run-of-the-mill biopic after Bohemian Rhapsody erased so much of Mercury’s life, and Rocketman felt like a PR exercise paid for by Elton John himself. Fans are wary of Back to Black, especially after the last Winehouse project, a revisionary documentary called Reclaiming Amy (the Stuff review wrote “too much of this feels calculated for sympathy, and, that none of the music industry appears speaks volumes.”)

The first glimpse doesn’t inspire much confidence. Star Marisa Abela looks 10 years too young for the part, and it will hard to shake her image as the Sloane Ranger Yasmin in HBO’s Industry.

Biopics are usually one of two things – restrained and muted arthouse films (Jackie, Spencer) or bombastic, loose-with-facts biographies (Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman) – and the sensitive details of Winehouse’s last days has her legions of fans justifiably on edge.

To quote Winehouse herself – “When will we leave well enough alone?”