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During an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe last week, Cyrus, 27, reflected on the song and the video, which has since racked up more than a billion views.

\"I had to, like, experience heartbreak to get to that song. I had to live it,\" she said, noting that she didn't have a hand in writing \"Wrecking Ball.\"

\"It wasn't a song that got sent to me on a demo and I just go 'Cut it.' I was living it publicly and ... getting shamed at that time for the nudity in the video, and me pushing sexual boundaries, and beginning to experiment, being a pro-weed activist -- and it was just all of it at the time.\"

Cyrus also made a notorious, sexually suggestive appearance on the MTV VMAs during the same era. Her appearance this Sunday on the VMAs, during which she'll perform her new song \"Midnight Sky,\" is expected to be much less controversial.

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