Miley Cyrus appears on and co-wrote Pharrell Williams' new single "Doctor (Work It Out)," which was released last Friday (March 1). While the collaborators were promoting the song on Apple Music's "The Zane Lowe Show," Cyrus gave her fellow "The Voice" coaching alum credit for encouraging her transition from "Hannah Montana" star to Grammy-winning pop idol.
"He was kind of the only one —I knew that everyone around me would tell me no— and he was really the only one that I asked, 'What did he think?'" Cyrus said. "And he was like, 'Go for it today, tomorrow, as soon as you can. That sounds like exactly the perfect thing to do.'"
Williams explained that when he gave such advice, Cyrus was ""in a place where no one really understood what she was, and I got it."
"I'll never forget just meeting her at a time where people had pegged her to be one thing particularly," he said. "She was Hannah Montana at the time, and she was growing up and really wanting to experience life no matter how far the precipice was, that was her."
Per the same interview, "Doctor (Work It Out)" was a decade in the making. The pair also worked together on Williams' 2014 single "Come Get It Bae." Both songs would've taken shape not too long after both "Hannah Montana's" series finale aired in January of 2011 and Cyrus' first truly bold creative statement: her 2013 album Bangerz.
"He was really the only one that I could kind of tell him what I really wanted, what I really wanted to make, who I really wanted to be, what I really wanted to do," Cyrus added. "I think Pharrell was perfect because it was almost like he could be a bumper for me, but he wasn't going to be a bridle."
