Miley Cyrus wrote three different songs while coming up with a track for Avatar: Fire and Ash.
The Flowers hitmaker co-wrote Dream as One with her previous collaborators Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt after being given the song’s title by Avatar director James Cameron.
They wrote the song that the public has heard on day one, but “threw it out” and came up with two different tracks before circling back and realising their first option was the best.
“We actually wrote the song that it is now, Dream as One, and we threw it out. We actually got rid of it and we wrote another one and then that one didn’t feel quite right,” she explained on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast. “We left and then we came back and we listened to the other one, the one that’s out now, and we’re like, ‘That’s the one.’ And then we threw it away again.
“Then we wrote kind of another song. And then Mark was out of town and I called Mark and said, ‘Should we really abandon the (first) one?’ And he goes, ‘I don’t know, let’s just take a break.’ And then he comes back in town and there’s another song and we listen to it and then I’m like, ‘Let’s listen to Dream as One one more time,’ and we do, and everyone’s like, ‘Forget these other songs, it’s Dream as One,’ and we went back to day one.”
Cyrus noted that while she has tweaked a song musically to change a melody, lyrics or sonic elements before, she has never written “three different songs”.
“James never even heard the other two. They were not worth listening to. The (first) one just always was Avatar,” she added.
Dream as One, which also features songwriting by the film’s composer Simon Franglen, appears during the movie’s end credits.
It is currently nominated for Best Original Song at the 2026 Golden Globes.
