“We’re just deciding who we want to be in our lives, what we want to do. So, don’t make it some drama story if, next week, we’re hanging out, getting pizza,” Miley said in a recent session on Instagram Live.

In her explanation as to why she and her fellow music artist have decided to call it quits, Miley said they still have some growing up to do. “Right now, two halves can’t make a whole, and we’re individually just working on ourselves to become the people we want to be, like everybody else at this age,” she pointed out.

“We have been friends for 10 years and we’re going to continue to be friends, so just don’t make it something that it is not,” she said of the Australian singer.

Miley was compelled to address the issue herself, shortly after the show biz news sites TMZ and Page Six—“citing sources close to the former couple”—broke the news about the breakup. It was her way of controlling her own narrative.

“So today, it came out that me and my boyfriend have broken up. It was confirmed by a ‘reliable source,’ even though no one is reliable in a relationship, except the individuals who are participating in it,” she said.

She experienced the same kind of treatment, Miley recounted, when she and her ex-husband, actor Liam Hemsworth, divorced last year after two years of marriage and 10 years of partnership.

“A year ago, almost on this exact date, the media tried to tell my story for me and control my narrative,” the former Disney star insisted. “And I’m just not accepting that.”

Read also: Death and hurt: Liam Hemsworth and Miley Cyrus reflect on their divorce one year later

In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter admitted to feeling “kind of villainized” after her divorce and being accused of infidelity—a rumor she had categorically denied.

“Obviously, I went through an extremely public breakup and—even more than that—a divorce, with someone I had been with for 10 years,” Miley said. “I also felt like I kind of shut down, because it was, respectfully, below me to engage with the press at the time.”

She would very much prefer it if she could use her music and art to “articulate” her personal experiences “in a poetic way”.

That’s exactly what she did with her latest single, “Midnight Sky”, which was inspired by the events and challenges she faced in the recent past, like her “growing pains”, the loss of her Malibu home to a California wildfire and “the loss of a love of my life”.

And this time, she’s taking ownership of her own story.

“I had to be human and experience and grow, but then I want to tell it directly from my mouth, and not from public perception, because my story throughout my career has been told through public perception a lot,” she said.

Music-wise, the song draws from “strong female musical icons”, like Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett and Debbie Harry, who have always been her “greatest allies and inspiration".

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