Let’s get prisoner…
[Video][Website]
[5.76]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: As a certified member of the top 1% of corporate Dua Lipa stans, it brings me no joy to find that she somehow makes this even more boring than it would’ve been if it were just Miley doing another tedious viral cover of some track from 1975-1995.
[3]
Katie Gill: The Miley Cyrus 1980s renaissance continues babyyyyy! Honestly, the main reason why I’m so predisposed to this song is that I had a big, dumb, stadium rock phase in high school. And that’s what this is: big, dumb stadium rock. There’s shades of KISS, Styx, Journey, all those big 1980s bands. And yet…I kind of wish this were bigger and dumber? For an objectively big, dumb, fun song, there are moments where it feels like everybody’s just a little TOO restrained. She’s eating a spider in the video, for fuck’s sake, you can get a little crazier with the song.
[7]
John Seroff: A quick view of the grotesquely bratty “Prisoner” video leaves the impression of uninspired shipping: two au courant pop titans offering little more than going through the musical motions and participation in the back-of-the-bus cuddle puddle with the aim of 50 million views by 2021. It’s Lipa’s second interpolation of “Let’s Get Physical” this year, fer crissakes. Did we really need another one? Surprise, we did! Andrew Watt’s bubbling glam bass line and Miley’s possibly best-yet vocal incarnation (Joan Jett by way of Jane Fonda?) cracked my mind and let the earworm in.
[7]
Al Varela: Even when taking into account a gem like “Party In The USA”, this is the best song Miley Cyrus has ever made. Miley and Dua Lipa are equals in their trashy anthem of slutty debauchery, backed by a grimy groove and one hell of a catchy hook. Full of freaky imagery that makes you want to indulge in your absolute worst impulses, it’s one of the most infectious club jams of the past few years that captures the dark angst of both artists while still having the lighthearted energy to make this one hell of an anthem. Truly a modern example of rock and roll.
[9]
Katherine St Asaph: The problem with the past few years of pop stars “going rock” is that the entirety of rock gets flattened into a Greatest Hits karaoke sesh, where all songs are equally important (did we need two “Physical” interpolations? Or any?) and the exact same genre. Miley Cyrus has a folk-rock voice (showcased well on her cover of “Doll Parts”), not a hard-rock voice. “Prisoner” definitely calls for a hard-rock vocal — or even just as hard as “Since U Been Gone” — but Cyrus sounds like she’s saving her voice in dress rehearsal, singing “I can’t control it” while restraining every note. And her parts have the most gusto here; whatever kind of distinctive voice Dua Lipa might develop, she hasn’t done it yet, and still doesn’t here.
[6]
Andrew Karpan: In a simpler time, I’d like to imagine that an ascending star like Dua Lipa would simply cover ye olde Lady Gaga instead of making no fewer than two oblique references to Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” in the past year. On this one, Lipa’s obsessive dedication to a certain kind of exuberant pop sound curiously befits the subject that she and Miley Cyrus choose for their shiny and long-awaited Eurodance team-up, a song about being (emotionally? creatively??) trapped and which gives the pair the chance to emphatically pulsate “prisoner, prisoner/locked up.” At least I think I liked this one better: after multiple spins, Lipa’s “Physical” eventually felt a tad fascistic (“Keep on dancing like you ain’t got a choice?” no thanks!) but here there’s at least a kind of soft hopelessness at the bottom of the song that I can respond to. Feeling stuck and so on. Cyrus’s presence means the song has to be a little “punked up” for reasons that I still do not quite understand, though I get how this works. The particularity of her rasping voice has become the point of a Miley Cyrus song.
[6]
Aaron Bergstrom: “Midnight Sky” was good, “Edge of Midnight” was even better, so I guess I’ll just check back in a month or so for the “Let’s Get Prisoner” remix. My working theory is that Dua Lipa’s entire career is an increasingly desperate attempt to get Olivia Newton-John’s attention for some reason.
[6]
Stephen Eisermann: You’re going to tell me that the stars behind “Midnight Sky” and “Physical” teamed up and this is what we ended up with? I hate it here.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Each has done better than this exemplary piece of rote pop craft, and it never helps when a titular conceit reflects the state of affairs: Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa don’t sound imprisoned so much as entombed.
[4]
Nortey Dowuona: A hovering synth tone watches Miley float, before drums carry in Dua, who swirls around with synths crinkling in circles as Miley swings abass synth up the steps onto the drums before Dua shatters them, spiraling down, with sudden synth birds popping by. Miley shimmers in the now swirling storm of bass synths and clattering drums with Dua swinging by and the both of them clinging to each other as they try to flee from the dragging synths and bass guitar wringing them out.
[7]
Austin Nguyen: One of my classmates said that “Prisoner” was one of the “more surface-level pop songs” that weighed Plastic Hearts down, but what exactly about it is “surface-level” or “pop”? “Prisoner” is no Future Nostalgia b-side, and “love as a prison” is less trite than, say, “love as a drug” and its other spin-offs; Cyrus knows she can do (and has done) worse. Meanwhile, no song in recent memory has made pining (the usual tropes here though: “your face on the ceiling,” “city lights”) seem so catchy (the pre-chorus collapse, punctuating handclaps, synth staccatos) yet self-destructive (“Why can’t you let me go” is a flawlessly simple red herring of who has the keys to freedom). Even Dua Lipa, who can sound effortless to a fault, commits to the messy rock aesthetic and pushes herself close to “Hotter than Hell” heights, losing none of the powerhouse-charged inertia or intensity Cyrus builds up. If there were any song to call “surface-level” and “pop,” it’d be on The Straight Side of music, not this calculated queer chaos.
[7]
Thomas Inskeep: Were this rocked up a bit, it could almost pass for a 1983 Pat Benatar single. I wish Dua Lipa’s vocal was rougher to match Cyrus’s, but “Prisoner” is nonetheless solid, if not exceptional.
[7]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: It’s hard to listen to Dua Lipa without fixating on how passionless she sounds, how unconvincing she is in her decidedly anonymous vocalizing. When she’s alone, songs can work because she’ll feel like little more than adornment to the production. When she’s with others, the illusion shatters. It’s no surprise, then, that “Prisoner” sounds dead on arrival: Miley Cyrus is so eager to please, belting out with such unrestrained, self-impressed grandeur that Lipa can’t be anything but a buzzkill in her modesty. The instrumentation during the chorus is a bit too muted, too, and Lipa’s take on it could use some of the forced energy she brought on “Physical.” Cyrus sounds like she’s having fun, at least, but “Prisoner” never reaches the thrill of sloppy karaoke nights, which this so often comes close to capturing.
[4]
Juana Giaimo: “Prisoner” is just fun. It has the ’80s vibes both Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus have been into in 2020, but I feel they gave up a little of their personality in this duo. Miley doesn’t sound as raw and passionate as in previous singles and Dua Lipa lost part of her delicacy and coldness — I would have loved to hear that contrast better!
[6]
Oliver Maier: People want to see Miley vindicated artistically, for reasons that escape me. There emerges, every time she releases a listenable song (usually this means: guitars in it, but not Wayne Coyne), the opinion that she vacillates between ugly provocative music and boring dad-friendly music because she is a mercurial talent earnestly trying to find the sound of her soul, and not because she is a spoiled hack with the resources to keep throwing armfuls of spaghetti at the wall (or in this case, at Dua Lipa, who is about as expressive). I admire, yet cannot replicate, such goodwill. Put simply, I think Miley is #fake and her voice is bad to listen to. Put in a way that addresses the song I’m halfway through ostensibly blurbing: “Prisoner” is a chore and nothing about it ignites my interest. Unlike any number of her ultra-cool ’70s and ’80s idols at their respective peaks, Miley is perpetually trying too hard, and it’s embarrassing to hear the effort expended on melodies that evaporate instantaneously. This is all the more pronounced when you stick her next to Dua, of whom you would be hard pressed to find a review that doesn’t use some variation of “cool” or “effortless” (or for whom, lest we forget, “go girl, give us nothing!” was coined). Her delivery is predictably fine, but she’s only ever as good as the instrumental she’s working with, which limits her significantly when said instrumental sounds like a Future Nostalgia C-side. The lyrics from both parties are pure sludge. If you wanted to sound like a convincing prisoner then some bars would be a start.
[2]
Jackie Powell: Miley Cyrus admitted on The Howard Stern Show that when she first wrote “Prisoner” it sounded like a track that belonged on Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. She’s right, it does. It begins with the hook as the leade of the track and then it transitions into the first verse. Also, there’s a silky smooth bassline. As a single, “Prisoner” works, and their voices complement each other well, but I can’t help but feel this track belongs on Future Nostalgia rather than Plastic Hearts. The percussion is more modern than reminiscent of ’80s rock than Cyrus probably wants it to be, and on her live performance on Stern’s show, it becomes obvious. Live it’s much more of an arena rock track. Cyrus growls, the rhythm guitar shines, the synths sound more like Heart’s “What about Love?” than Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” and the snare, hi-hat, and kick are front and center. The way Cyrus performed it live fits better on the rest of the record than the actual studio version. It’s disappointing, but I’ll give this cut brownie points for its music video treatment which is equally vampiric as it is a tribute to Rocky Horror’s Science Fiction Double Feature.
[6]
Rachel Saywitz: There is no Heaven or Hell when we die. There is only a putrid smelling, blood soaked tour bus rolling down an never-ending rocky mountain, and the only respite from this automobiled torture is watching Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa smear cherries on the other’s mouth and grab each other in passion to scream out, “why can’t you, why can’t you just let me go,” over and over again. It’s both wonderful and horrifying at the same time.
[8]