It’s a sad day for those hoping for the eventual re-reunion of teen movie power couple Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth, who announced over the weekend that they are “lovingly taking […] time apart.” With the release of a new song that more than obliquely references her husband, Cyrus seems to be shutting a door on her almost decade-long on-again off-again romance with Hemsworth.
“Slide Away,” which Cyrus debuted on Friday, includes lines such as, “Move on, we’re not 17/ I’m not who I used to be” and “You say everything’s changed/ You’re right, we’re grown now.” The pair met on the set of The Last Song, an adaptation of the book by Nicholas Sparks, back when Cyrus was still trading on her squeaky-clean Disney image.
Though it’s not the first time the couple has called it quits—they had in fact been engaged more than once before they got married—“Slide Away” has a certain air of finality. (And yet, who knows? It’s Hollywood!) Regardless of the longevity of this split, the song that emerged from it is already the seventh-most trending video on YouTube, so at least some good came from all this, right?
It is notable that on the same day that Cyrus released a song signaling the end of an era, her fellow good-girl-gone-semi-villian Taylor Swift dropped a bop of her own that suggests an engagement is on the horizon. The ever-churning cycle of famous people getting together and breaking up—and the industry built on it—continues apace.