We Can't Stop

About

"We Can't Stop" is a 2013 R&B dance song performed by singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus. Upon its release in June 2013, the song and music video inspired a series of remixes, covers and parodies, some of which bear similarities to dubbed versions of the "I Knew You Were Trouble" music video by Taylor Swift.

Origin

The song “We Can’t Stop” was released as the lead single for Miley Cyrus’ fourth studio album on June 3rd, 2013. On the following day, the official Miley Cyrus Facebook^[3] page announced that the singer’s upcoming music video for the song will feature a series of fan-made twerking videos. The status update also contained a link to a Facebook application^[4] through which the fans could submit their videos with the hashtag #FanMade.^[5]

On June 19th, the music video premiered on the MileyCyrusVEVO YouTube channel (shown below), which gained over 105.8 million views and 746,000 comments in the first six weeks.

Spread

On July 6th, YouTuber Brittani Louise Taylor uploaded a parody mocking several elements contained within the “We Can’t Stop” video (shown below, left). On July 7th, The Fine Bros released an episode of "Teens React" in which several teenagers share their first impressions of the music video (shown below, right). In the next month, the videos garnered upwards of 1.5 million and five million views respectively.

On July 8th, 2013, Vine user Aaron Sanders tweeted a video featuring a muted clip from the "We Can't Stop" video with a loud screeching voice replacing Cyrus' vocal track.

On July 11th, Vine user Lord Hillz uploaded a similar video featuring the same clip from the music video with a loud voice yelling over the vocal track.

On July 12th, YouTuber Bart Baker uploaded a parody video mocking Cyrus’ rumored drug use (shown below, left). On the same day, YouTuber Shane Dawson released a parody criticizing Cyrus for being a poor role model for teens (shown below, right). In the following two weeks, each video received over 4 million views.

On July 16th, the Barely Political YouTube channel posted a parody mocking Cyrus’ twerking video (shown below, left), which accumulated more than 4.5 million views and 10,000 comments in the first two weeks. On the following day, MSN^[2] posted an article highlighting the Barely Political video. On July 22nd, College Humor^[1] uploaded a version of the “We Can’t Stop” video with the music track removed (shown below, right). Within the next week, the video garnered upwards of 21,000 Facebook likes.

Notable Examples

Search Interest