II Most Wanted

II Most Wanted: Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus Find Each Other on the Road

There are collaborations that feel like events and then there are the ones that feel almost inevitable, as though two artists' career trajectories were always going to intersect at exactly this point. When Beyoncé enlisted Miley Cyrus for II Most Wanted on Cowboy Carter, the combination made a kind of biographical sense that rewarded attention. Cyrus had been an outlaw in her own industry for years; Beyoncé was making an album explicitly about outlaws and the gatekeepers who try to stop them.

Cowboy Carter's Biggest Chart Partner

Of all the collaborations on Cowboy Carter, II Most Wanted was the one that traveled furthest on the Billboard Hot 100, and by a considerable margin. The song debuted at number 6 on April 13, 2024, making it the highest-charting single from the album at that time. It spent six weeks on the Hot 100, holding its top-ten position through the initial surge before gradually descending. That debut position placed it among the strongest chart entries of Beyoncé's own career and marked Cyrus's highest charting collaboration in years.

Sound and Chemistry

The track has the sprawl and confidence of a classic outlaw country ballad, its production leaning into the wide-open sonic landscape that Beyoncé and her team built across the record. Cyrus's voice, roughened by years of genre experimentation, meets Beyoncé's controlled power in a way that sounds unforced; neither artist sounds like a guest on the other's record. They are partners in the scene the song describes, two figures who have operated outside the safety of establishment approval and found that freedom suits them. The harmonies are close, lived-in and warm.

The Miley Cyrus Angle

Cyrus came into this collaboration with significant recent momentum. Her 2023 single Flowers had become one of the biggest-selling songs of that year globally, resetting her commercial standing and confirming what her fan base had always maintained: she was a major artist who had simply been moving at her own pace. Her pivot away from the Disney image years earlier, her genre-wandering career, her refusal to make safe decisions: all of it fed directly into what II Most Wanted required. Beyoncé's instinct to cast her was, on reflection, exactly right.

The Outlaw Metaphor

The song uses the language of fugitives and wanted posters not as costume but as emotional logic. Both artists, the lyrics suggest, have been chased by other people's expectations, by industry gatekeepers, by critics who thought they had already finished the story. The decision to run together rather than alone shifts the song's emotional register from defiance to solidarity. Two women, two careers, one shared understanding of what it costs to refuse the script you were handed at the start.

Legacy Within the Album

Cowboy Carter is likely to be studied for some time as a document of a major artist at full creative command, and II Most Wanted stands as its most commercially potent moment. Press play and you'll hear what two people sound like when they've each decided, independently and then together, that the road ahead belongs to them.

“II Most Wanted” — Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus's singular moment on the 2020s charts.