Miley Cyrus kicked off the 2024 Grammys with her first-ever win.
Cyrus, 31, won best pop solo performance for “Flowers,” beating out Doja Cat, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift, and as she took the stage to accept the award from Mariah Carey, she couldn’t help but fangirl over the fellow pop queen who presented her the award.
She kicked off her speech with a shoutout to Mariah Carey, who presented the award to her.
“This MC Is Gonna Stand by This MC,” Cyrus said, adding “this is just too iconic.”
She said she was “stuck in the rain and traffic” and worried she was going to “miss” the first award of the night, “and I could’ve missed the award, that’s fine, but not Mariah Carey. I just saw you at the Hollywood Bowl, it was everything.”
“I got my lucky No. 3 seat and so there’s a story I want to tell that sums up this moment and I wasn’t going to tell it, but now Mariah’s here,” she said, as she went onto to share:
“So there was a little boy that all he wanted for his birthday was a butterfly. And so his parents gave him a butterfly net and he was so excited. He just went outside, out in the sun, and started swinging and swinging. But with no luck. He sat down on the ground he finally let go and he surrendered and he was okay that he wasn’t gonna capture this beautiful butterfly. And right when he did is when the butterfly came and landed right on the tip of his nose.”
Carey said “Aw” in the background as Cyrus recounted the story before adding, “This song ‘Flowers’ is my butterfly. Thank you.”
Cyrus’s self-love anthem was the first single from her album Endless Summer Vacation. After its release, it spent eight weeks at the top of the U.S. Billboard charts and became the most-streamed song in a single week on Spotify.
On its one-year anniversary, Cyrus thanked fans for making it a success, writing on Instagram, “One year ago today ‘Flowers’ started making people happy & that makes me happy. Love you. Thank you.”
Doja Cat received a nomination for the track “Paint the Town Red.” The song samples Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By.” Warwick shared on Instagram that she was “thrilled” to have played a role in the creation of the song.
“I wanted to say, I think it’s wonderful that these youngsters who are recording today had decided to listen to some really good stuff of the old folks. Those that been recording for well over 20, 30, 40, 50 years and making decisions that good music plays a very important part. So I’m thrilled that you’re discovering us, that you’re keeping us alive,” she shared shortly after it was released.
Billie Eilish’s nomination was for her track “What Was I Made For?” off the Barbie soundtrack. The song was something Eilish shared in an interview with Apple Music 1 host Zane Lowe, which came out of a “frustration in writing.”
“And Finneas has always been the one that’s like, ‘No, no, no, let’s write. Let’s write.’ And honestly, we were in a period of time where we were both … like through this last winter, we’ve both been incredibly uninspired. And we’ve still been working and trying to make stuff,” she said. “And honestly, that song was the first thing we’d written in a minute.”
Rodrigo’s nomination was for the track “Vampire.” “I made it with my very talented wonderful friend @dan_nigro last winter and created the video with the incredible @petrafcollins. writing this song helped me sort through lots of feelings of regret, anger, and heartache,” Rodrigo shared on Instagram after it was released.
Swift received a nomination for her track “Anti-Hero” — one of her most vulnerable songs to date. “I really don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before,” she said in a clip on Instagram. “You know, I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized, and that I, you know… not to sound too dark, but, like, I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.”
See PEOPLE’s full coverage of the 66th annual Grammy Awards as they’re broadcasting live on CBS from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
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