Despite Miley Cyrus’ latest album, Something Beautiful, being among her best work to date, the decision to write and record a song called “Easy Lover” after Ellie Goulding already did the same so recently (in 2023) is a bit of a misstep. Sure, it would be one thing if Cyrus had a song with the same title and it actually addressed a different sort of subject matter, but, by and large, it’s parroting what Goulding already said. And yet, Billboard ranked Cyrus’ track at number three out of the thirteen on Something Beautiful, indicating a general belief that “Easy Lover” is a highlight of the record, and maybe even Cyrus’ career. But that can’t really be true if Goulding already hit the nail on the head with this theme via the lead single for Higher Than Heaven (an incredibly underrated album, maybe even more so than Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism).
In both songs’ cases, the singer is addressing a lover who is anything but “easy like Sunday morning.” Oh no, this is a toxic creature—but one that neither woman can resist going back to again and again. Indeed, one might argue that the entire “allure” of the person is their, well, “hardness” (in more ways than one, to be sure). Which also goes back to what Britney Spears was saying on 2003’s “Toxic”: “I’m addicted to you, don’t you know that you’re toxic?/And I love what you do, don’t you know that you’re toxic?” That love-hate dynamic driving what makes the relationship feel like such a “thrill.” To lose it would, therefore, make everything feel just much too…easy. Something that Darren Starr acknowledged that some women have a problem with in the season three episode of Sex and the City, “Drama Queens,” wherein Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) can’t deal with the drama-freeness of her legitimate easy lover, Aidan (John Corbett).
Nor, apparently, can Goulding or Cyrus. For Goulding, dissecting the pull of a fuckboy is part of the rich tradition of female songwriting (just ask Taylor Swift). And one that she relished while crafting this single with Julia Michaels “after conversations about the age-old tale of being infatuated by someone cool and beautiful knowing that they will never quite feel the same. It’s about going back to the same dangerous person to feel alive when you know they have hurt people again and again before you.” However, as far as Goulding was concerned, the song didn’t really come together until songwriter/producer Greg Kurstin came in to imbue it with the right sound (one that Goulding called out as being MGMT-esque [and yes, it does have an “Electric Feel” kind of backbeat]). Coincidentally, the same year that Goulding’s “Easy Lover” came out was also the year that “Jaded” by Cyrus did—another song co-written and produced by Kurstin (and the only collaboration thus far that he’s ever done with Cyrus). And for those who might try to aruge that Cyrus was already working on an early version of “Easy Lover” during the Plastic Hearts era, well, Goulding was working on hers as early as 2017 (weirdly, it took both of them five years to reach a “final product” status for the song).
And one can tell she was very measured in coming up with lyrics like, “It’s gone too far, I’m too deep, I can’t sleep/I’m still foolishly in love with you/Just like all the other girls you promised/I can’t stop believin’ you want me/And you’re foolishly in love/But you’re not, so I take a shot.” After that verse, Goulding then delves into the earworm of a chorus, “Easy lover, oh (ah, ah, ah)/Keep it cool on me/Don’t be cruel to me (ah, ah, ah)/‘Cause I know you’ve done it before.” Cyrus conveys similar sentiments in the opening verse of her “Easy Lover,” illustrating her torture with, “You’re my baby, you’re the only one/You drive me crazy, oh, but I still miss you when you’re gone/Every second, every hour/It’s in your nature, to light me up/I love to hate ya, uh, but I can’t stand it when you’re gone/So I call you once every hour.” To be sure, she definitely sounds like she’s being way more openly needy than Goulding.
As for each pop star’s accompanying music video, it says less about a love they’re addicted to and more about fashion-forwardness. Still, Goulding appears to have more to actually “say” with her video, filled with women of all ages looking as though they’ve been through it with a not so easy lover at some point or another in their lives. Cyrus, instead, opts to center her video concept (co-directed by Cyrus, Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter, as all the Something Beautiful videos are) on getting ready for a big musical number. Hence, starting out in a dressing room where she prepares for hair and makeup, at certain moments seeming to talk to herself when she looks at the mirror and tells her reflection that she’s not an easy lover.
In the next scene, Cyrus—now outfitted in the costume she’ll wear on set with a blazer thrown over it—walks through the backlot like she owns the whole studio. Clocking a “worker type,” the two have a little Alex McArthur-passing-by-Madonna-in-the-“Papa Don’t Preach”-video moment, with Cyrus going so far as to wink and everything. Cyrus then struts through the studio where the shoot is, taking her coat off as she does so, like she’s Maxine fucking Minx about to nail the audition. Catching a slow-motion glimpse of herself in the camera’s lens, it’s in this instant, too, that one could be led to believe that Cyrus is addressing herself as the not easy lover, just as much as the object of her affection.
Taking the stage, which features a step-filled platform with a “sun” backdrop at the top of the staircase, Cyrus then delves into the choreography she clearly wants to be a thing on TikTok. All while continuing to lament/complain/delight, “You got the love I always needed/Tie me to horses, I still wouldn’t leave ya/But you’re not an easy lover/You make it hard to touch another/Anything goes when we’re under covers/But you’re not an easy lover/No, I just can’t give you/No, I just can’t give you up.” Goulding draws a similar conclusion when she says, early on in the song, “And I’ve been walkin’ in a straight line, fightin’ this again/But every time I lеave, you pull me back in.”
Goulding also goes one step further by actually allowing the male perspective “flipside” into this song with a feature from Big Sean. It’s he who assures, “Everything that’s easy ain’t worth it/And everything that’s worth it ain’t gon’ be easy/I made mistakes you can’t say that I repeated/I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t need you.” These words also being the type of declaration that Cyrus, within the context of “Easy Lover,” yearns to hear. And while Something Beautiful is perhaps her “masterpiece” record, the lack of originality displayed on “Easy Lover” is a low point rather than a high one, as Billboard suggested, of the record.
While the disco-meets-pop-meets-rock-meets-country sound is perhaps what differentiates Cyrus’ “Easy Lover” the most from Goulding’s (who favors a more cohesive sonic direction), it still isn’t enough to surpass what she already achieved. Lyrically, however, both women are saying pretty much exactly the same thing: “good dick will imprison you.” In short, the exact opposite of what Philip Bailey and Phil Collins were saying.
