Doctor (Work It Out)

Album: single release only (2024)
Charted: 46 74
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Songfacts®:

  • "Doctor (Work It Out)" is a lustful bop where Miley Cyrus offers herself to her love interest, like a doctor providing care. It's one of many songs that uses playful language and medical metaphors to explore a physical and intimate connection. Others include:

    "Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)" by Robert Palmer
    "Doctor! Doctor!" by Thompson Twins
    "Doctor Jones" by Aqua
    "Bad Medicine" by Bon Jovi
    "Calling Dr. Love" by Kiss
    "Disease" by Matchbox Twenty
  • The song is a collaboration between Miley Cyrus and Pharrell Williams. It marks their sixth collaboration together. The previous five were:

    Four tracks recorded for Cyrus' 2013 Bangerz album, including "4x4" and "#GETITRIGHT."

    "Come Get It Bae" from Pharrell Williams' 2014 solo album Girl, where Cyrus contributed guest vocals.
  • Cyrus and Williams originally recorded "Doctor (Work It Out)" back in 2013 for Bangerz, but it didn't make the final tracklist. The song first appeared online when it was leaked with the title "Doctor" on December 26, 2017. The pair re-recorded the track in 2023 with additional writing from New York songwriter Michael Pollack ("Prisoner," "Flowers") and released it on March 1, 2024.

    "We just believe so much in timing and in everything happening when it's supposed to," Cyrus told Apple Music's Zane Lowe. "And around the Grammys, Pharrell and I were talking about putting the song out, and it just felt like it was so serendipitous, and there were so many alignments and so many moments that made me know that now was the perfect time. And then sometimes things in our past make more sense in our present than they ever did then. And so this song, I think the nature, the celebration, the feeling, especially with the video, the joy, the dancing, the letting go, it's what this song really always needed."
  • Pharrell Williams first previewed the song during the livestream of his Louis Vuitton menswear fall-winter show during Paris Fashion Week on January 16, 2024.

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