On May 4, Miley Cyrus’ 'Flowers' became the fastest song in history to surpass 1 billion streams on Spotify. Reaching the mark just 112 days after its release, the lead single from Cyrus’ album Endless Summer Vacation spent eight weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100 list.


Except, nobody’s heard of it. Well, that’s not true exactly, millions of people know the song all too well. But plenty of folks on Twitter just aren't buying the streaming numbers they’re seeing – or hearing.




The prominent Twitter account @kirawontmiss shared the news to their almost 1 million followers. “I can’t be the only one who has never heard of this song,” they said. “Something fishy going on.” Plenty of people agreed.






Like with Meghan Trainor’s massive 2022 hits ‘Made You Look’ and ‘Mother,’ ‘Flowers’ caught the ears of the only demographic that matters these days; TikTok. The song has been used in 5.1 million different videos so far and while these plays don’t count towards the 1 billion Spotify listens, they undoubtedly had a colossal impact on the song’s reach.


“I’ve heard this song for months on radio and TikTok,” Twitter user @C_Nasty92 said. “You're living under a rock Kira.”


“My girl has had that on repeat for the last 2-3 months now,” @realreysanchez said. “She probably made it number one like that.”





Despite the song’s ubiquity across social media, it hardly seems to have captured the cultural moment like ‘God’s Plan,’ ‘Gangnam Style,’ or other number one hits. And if you don’t spend much time on TikTok or listening to pop radio, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard it at all. But the numbers don’t lie… unless they do.