Miley Cyrus Explains How ‘See You Again’ Became a Hit Despite Label Doubting It: “Fans Decided Otherwise”

When she was 14 years old and a TV celebrity in 2007, Miley Cyrus was more recognized for her role as Hannah Montana than for her singing career. She thought she was trapped in an identity crisis where nobody knew who she was, much like her on-screen Hannah Montana persona, per Rolling Stone.

As she revealed in a recent TikTok, she made an effort to set the two apart on her first album, a double CD with the titles Hannah Montana 2 and Meet Miley Cyrus. Even while she firmly believed in the content of Meet Miley, particularly the first song See You Again, her record label, the Disney-owned Hollywood Records, had a different perspective. “My record label at the time didn’t think the song was a hit, so there was never a music video made for it,” she says in the latest installment of her Used to Be Young TikTok series.

“I wrote that song in a way that would feel really personal to Miley so there would be no confusion between me and the character. But yes, my record label told me that the song wasn’t gonna be a hit. And my fans decided otherwise. It’s always been us,” the hitmaker shared. The song ultimately entered the Top 10 on Billboard.

She gets into the rhythm as she sees a YouTube video of herself playing the song and exclaims, "Work, work, work." “Hannah’s for kids,” she says, “Miley’s for grown-ass men in heels.” Additionally, she discussed the process of writing the song, which combines somber sections with chanting choruses and lines like "She's just being Miley."

“I had my own name in the song,” she says. “I say my best friend Leslie in the song. And so this was really the beginning of my storytelling for my fans.”

See You Again was voted ninth among Miley Cyrus' top 50 songs by Rolling Stone. “If it were only the vehicle for her eventual catch-all phrase ‘She’s just being Miley,’ this crushed-out jam would be worthy of inclusion on this list,” the blurb about the song says. “But it’s also a fine launching point for her post-Disney career and one of the stronger entrants in the late-aughts microgenre of growing-up pop.”

In a recent episode of her Used to Be Young TikTok series, where she details all major moments in her life and career, Miley Cyrus spoke up about the hard schedule she had during her Hannah Montana days. Miley was already a worldwide superstar at the time because of her starring role on the Disney Channel's Hannah Montana.

“Then the next day starts at 7 AM and ends at 7:30 PM when I fly home to probably go to the Hannah set. That's on a Saturday, and then Monday you'd be back at work in the morning. I’m a lot of things but lazy is not one of them,” Miley said with a laugh after listing off her routine days.