Songfacts®:

• "End of the World" is an '80s confection of synth-rock and disco-pop, the kind of thing you might expect to hear at a roller rink just before the final siren. The premise is charmingly grim: the world might be ending, but why not throw one last party in the face of oblivion? Miley Cyrus directs this message to a partner - one who has a penchant for doomscrolling or at the very least, a sense of impending catastrophe. Rather than join them in existential despair, she proposes a novel alternative: "Let's pretend it's not the end of the world."
  
  Simple. Cheery. Possibly delusional. But also, rather liberating.
• As the song unfolds, Cyrus touches on her personal history with the California city of Malibu:
  
  Yeah, let's go down to Malibu and watch the sun fade out once more
  Show me how you'd hold me if tomorrow was coming for sure
  
  The lyric echoes Cyrus' 2017 track "Malibu," a song now tinged with deeper significance since the Woolsey Fire burned down her home there in 2018. The past, present, and possible future all seem to melt into one wistful, neon-lit sunset.
• "End of the World" shares similar apocalyptic themes with Prince's "1999." Both songs highlight the importance of living in the present, but while Cyrus leans into emotional intimacy and existential reflection, Prince opts for a more carefree celebration of life.
• Cyrus wrote "End of The World" for her mother, Trish Cyrus, in a hard moment.
  
  "I had never had my mom leave the country without me before," Cyrus told the New York Times. "And my mom called me and said: 'I don't know why, but I want to cry today. I'm looking out my window, and there's nothing out there for me, because you're back home.' The first lyric is, 'Today you woke up and you told me that you wanted to cry,' and that was my mom."
• Cyrus wrote the song with Molly Rankin, Alec O'Hanley, Aldae, Michael Pollack, Shawn Everett, and Jonathan Rado.
  
  Molly Rankin is the vocalist and Alec O'Hanley the guitarist of the Canadian indie pop band Alvvays.
  
  New York songwriter Michael Pollack and LA-based songwriter Aldae both helped Cyrus write her 2023 hit "Flowers."
  
  Jonathan Rado and Shawn Everett who are known for their work with The Killers.
  
  Cyrus shares production credit with Pollack, Everett, Rado, Rankin, O'Hanley, and her musician boyfriend Maxx Morando.
• Cyrus debuted the song during an intimate, acoustic performance at the famous Chateau Marmont Hotel in Hollywood in early 2023. It was released on April 4, 2025, as the lead single from her album Something Beautiful - an ambitious, operatic project she described on Instagram as a "carefully structured journey."
• The music video shows Cyrus, clad in a shimmering Mugler minidress the color of radioactive limes, performing on a glowing orange stage. She directed it with Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter who both had a hand in earlier visual outings for "Prelude" and the album's title track, "Something Beautiful."
• Cyrus got emotional when she sang the song at the Chateau Marmont. She explained to The New York Times:
  
  "My mom was right in the front row, and there's a part - it does it to me now - that says, 'You've been thinking about the future like it's already yours.' To me that was a lyric about not only mortality but just that every day isn't promised to us, so worrying about the future that may never come is pointless, but then me thinking about a future without her just breaks my heart. That lyric gets me every time."