Miley Cyrus is looking back on the year 2017 on the anniversary of her hit track “Malibu” from that year.
The song turned four on Tuesday (May 11), and Miley commemorated the occasion with a post on Instagram.
Sharing a video from when she was writing the song, she wrote in the caption, “Today is the 4 year anniversary of Malibu. A song about a place and person that at the time I loved very much. That love was reciprocated beyond what I could describe here with freedom & escapism.”
“I lost that home along with many others in 2018,” she continued and explained the accompanying video, “Here is a video of me writing that song.”
The track came out when Miley and Liam were still together – the pair were together on-and-off for almost a decade since meeting on the set of The Last Song in 2009. At the time, she dished about the song to Billboard, saying she wrote it partly because she wanted to take back the narrative of their relationship. “They’re going to talk about me if I come out of a restaurant with Liam. So why not put the power back in my relationship and say, ‘This is how I feel’?”
She also referenced their 2013 breakup in the interview. “Changing with someone else not changing like that is too hard. Suddenly you’re like, ‘I don’t recognize you anymore,’” she shared, adding that they had to “refall for each other” when they reconciled.
The pair were living together in Liam’s place in Malibu at the time – but the house was one of the thousands of homes that were destroyed by the 2018 Woolsey Fire. A month later, the two tied the knot in a private ceremony in Franklin, Tennessee. However, by August 2019, less than a year since they said “I do,” Liam and Miley ended up going their separate ways – they finalized their divorce in January 2020.
Last December, in an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Miley opened up about her relationship with Liam and how losing their home affected it.
“I lost everything,” Miley said. “And so in trying to put that back together, instead of going, ‘Oh, nature kind of did something I couldn’t do for myself, it forced me to let go,’ I ran toward the fire. Which is not abnormal, a lot of animals do this and end up dying, like deers run into the forest. You’re attracted to that heat and me being an intense person and not wanting to sit with it, and not wanting to go, you know, ‘What could be purposeful about this?’ I just clung to what I had left of that house, which was me and him.”
“And I really do and did love him very, very, very much and still do, always will,” she added.
