It may not feature any twerking, but the music video for Miley Cyrus' new song "Wrecking Ball" was released today — and it's safe to say that the onetime Hannah Montana star will be drawing a few more headlines before her new album, Bangerz, is released in November.
The music video opens with a Wayne's World-style extreme close-up of Cyrus' face as a single tear drips down her cheek. "I came in like a wrecking ball, I never hit so hard in love / all I wanted was to break your walls, all you ever did was break me," screams Cyrus in a chorus that will undoubtedly spawn a thousand tabloid pieces about the status of her relationship with that guy who was barely in The Hunger Games.
And then: Nudity! Master of subtlety Terry Richardson — whose love of celebrity nudity is well-documented — decided to approximate the metaphorical wrecking ball of Cyrus' song by placing her, sans clothing, atop an actual wrecking ball. Clever stuff. (The NSFW part starts at around 75 seconds in.) And lest you think the "Wrecking Ball" video is just an excuse for Cyrus to stage a naked construction-yard rodeo; the singer also spends plenty of time licking a sledgehammer and rolling around in a pile of rubble.
On Sunday, Cyrus tweeted that she would release the full track list for Bangerz, including her collaborators, if the "Wrecking Ball" video set the all-time record for most views on the VEVO platform within 24 hours. It's a record that Cyrus herself broke in June when the video for "We Can't Stop" earned 10.7 million views on its day of release — a number quickly bested by One Direction's "Best Song Ever," which earned 10.9 million views in July.
YouTube is verifying the video's view count, so it's unclear if Cyrus is on track to break One Direction's record, but you can always click play if you'd like to do your small part to help her hype machine keep rolling — or, you know, don't.
