Noah Cyrus says the ability to write ‘classic' music is in her blood. Her latest album offers a chance to show the world
I've asked all of these questions/And I got one more/If that's all there is/Then what's it all for?/What's it all for?'
Cyrus, often writing with Australian singer-songwriter PJ Harding, has a way of storytelling that captures the grit and highs and lows of real life the way Kris Kristofferson does on the classic 'Sunday Morning Comin' Down,' or John Mellencamp and Lucinda Williams do.
Her song, 'July,' released when she was 19, was praised by the likes of John Mayer and Leon Bridges and has more than a billion streams. So the potential for something special has always been there. But now that she has put it all together on 'I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me' the result transcends special. The 11 songs on the album bridge storytelling with classic country and folk sounds that hark back to the '70s, a la songs like the Eagles' 'Wasted Time.'
'I hope that this record, when I hear it, I hear something that's very classic and reminds me of music that's been around for a very long time,' she says.
Cyrus has that 'classic' music in her blood and bones. Old soul is often a trite, overused expression, but when you grow up in a famous family in the public eye, as Noah Cyrus has, it is an accurate one — her father is country music veteran Billy Ray Cyrus and her sister is pop star Miley Cyrus.
Cyrus said she grew up faster than most people her age. 'I've been touring since I was 16, I've been making music since I was 16,' she tells The Times. ' I grew up in a family that was in the public eye. I think with that there were certain things that we could and couldn't do, that felt restricted because of the public eye or the way we'd be judged or the way we were judged whenever we made mistakes just as kids.'
She turned 25 in January, which brought a new maturity. Like another all-time great songwriter, Jackson Browne, who famously wrote 'These Days' when he was 16, Cyrus has shown a wisdom beyond her years.
She addresses growing up throughout the album. 'I turned 25 this January and I talk about this on the record It's one of the themes of the album … growing up and new countries about walking on your own two feet and going into unknown land and no matter where you go, there you are. And just learning how to deal with that and cope with that as a young adult,' she says. 'That was something that was going on at the time of creating this record. That's why I just fell into the themes because as a person I was like, 'How do I not second-guess myself with every single move? How do I learn to trust myself? How do I learn how to become an adult that's going to be a mother one day? How do I grow up so one day I can take care of another actual person?''
Having confronted fame and the insecurity that comes with youth, she was ready to take control of her artistic vision with this album.
'I found out a lot about my senses on a song and learning to trust that as a songwriter. I learned a lot how to lead for myself as a musician. This is the first record that I have actual producer credits on and I actually produce some of these songs with Mike [Crossey],' she says. 'It was a really beautiful experience and a great learning experience. I really was surprised by those intuitions. And when I listened to the final product, I think it's the first time in my career where I'm actually really proud of myself.'
Cyrus made sure her personal touch was felt on every aspect of the record, including the eclectic quartet of guests: Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Bill Callahan, Ella Langley and Blake Shelton.
She made sure the invite to Shelton on 'New Country' came directly from her. 'I really wanted to personally talk to Blake and wrote him a letter and did all the things to really make this a personal connection,' she says. 'Blake and I have a mutual friend on the song — Amy Wadge, she's one of my favorite songwriters and I love her so much. It was like a God thing telling me you have to reach out to Blake. When I heard that song, it was Blake's from the beginning. And Blake made it happen. It felt like this spiritual thing that was bound to happen and something that was just written up there in the stars was having Blake on this record.'
For all the notable guests, the centerpiece of the album fittingly features Cyrus' grandfather. The mesmerizing spiritual hymn 'Apple Tree,' which is like the love child of a Nick Cave song and Dolly Parton track, is built around her grandfather's voice.
'I do feel like 'Apple Tree' is a song from God because of the prayer that is said at the end and spoken by my grandfather Ron Cyrus,' she says.
It's fitting that the song features her grandfather because 'I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me' is very much Cyrus returning to her Nashville roots and the music she grew up around. Though she says it's just a happy accident, her embracing the music that is her birthright coincides with the surge in popularity of country music.
'When I was making this album, country was really getting its mainstream momentum again and taking over the world again as it was when I was a baby, when CMA fans used to have Fanfare and stuff. I remember my dad doing Fanfare. For me it's really awesome because I think country music has so much more of a wider audience and so many people are starting to connect with country,' she says. 'I think that was just God's timing with the album and everything and it all lining up.'
While artists have been increasingly embracing country, for Cyrus this wasn't about a trend — she was following the natural order of things. Many musicians will say that as they get older, they return to their roots.
So this was Cyrus coming home. 'The more freedom I got I just kept putting more and more of myself into the record, which is metaphorically and literally back to my roots. I think I've been longing to feel closer to where I come from. I put that into my music and that's such a beautiful outlet for me. And I think there's so many people, not just kids, as an adult, as your parent, you feel things, they're just like you and the child inside you, it's all still broken, no matter how old you get, you still have that inner child inside of you. I think a lot of that inner child goes into my music and you hear a lot of my inner child.'
Though Cyrus loves the storytelling aspect of classic country records, it is just as much about the sound of those albums and artists as it is the lyrics. She reveled in that raw, organic sound in making this album.
'That was a fun thing for me again to learn is when you take all the bells and whistles away on a vocal and you just have that person's originality and that person's personality and let that shine through on a vocal. That's the best thing you can do, just have the most amazing and natural raw vocals for people to hear and that's what I love about the genre of country music and especially older records where you're singing full takes and that's what the record is. That's a lot of the time what Mike and I like to do with our songs, is our songs are full takes of everything. We like everything to feel live, and I think that's an important part of the record.'
The goal was an album that defies categorization and time. She wanted a record that if you had found it in 1975 and put it on right next to Bob Dylan's 'Blood on the Tracks' or you played it in 2025 it would have sounded of that time. In her pursuit of that lofty goal, she transcends the genre tag. This isn't what most people think of as country today. The closest contemporary artist would be Chris Stapleton, who, when seen live, embodies a Neil Young solo acoustic; it could be country, folk, rock.
That's what Cyrus set out to do. 'When I hear it, I hear a record that will hopefully give the listener a chance to heal as it was a really healing experience for myself,' she says. 'And I hope that this record, for me, is something that in 20 years … people are still mentioning and it's a monumental album in the timeline of my career.'
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Drake would ultimately confirm Adonis' existence months later on his album Scorpion. In an interview for the 2003 documentary Living with Michael Jackson, Jackson admitted to sleeping in bed with young boys. "I've slept in the bed with many children. I'd sleep in the bed with all of them," he said. "When Macaulay Culkin [was] little, Kieran Culkin would sleep on this side, Macaulay Culkin's on this side. His sister's in there. We'd all just jam in the bed. And we'd wake up at dawn and go in the hot air balloon." When questioned on if this was "right," Jackson said, "It's very right, it's very loving. ... What's wrong with sharing the love?" He also said he had footage of them all sleeping together. On other occasions, Jackson denied sharing his bed with children, saying he'd slept on the floor: "I didn't sleep in the bed with the child. Even if I did, it's OK. I slept on the floor. I gave the bed to the child," he told 60 Minutes in 2003, the same year as the documentary referenced above. This was a bombshell revelation, given Jackson had settled in 1993 after being accused of child sexual abuse and was constantly plagued by rumors regarding his relationships with children. Jackson was later found "not guilty" in 2005 after another accusation, and the sexual abuse allegations continued after his death in 2009, most notably in the documentary Finding Neverland. Another unforgettable reveal comes from Frank Farian, a name you might not recognize. Back in the late '80s, R&B duo Milli Vanilli reached worldwide fame with their debut album, leading them to win the award for Best New Artist at the 1990 Grammy Awards. But producer Frank Farian soon revealed they didn't sing on their albums. When the two "singers" were confronted by the Los Angeles Times, member Rob Pilatus admitted it was true. "I feel like a mosquito being squeezed. The last two years of our lives have been a total nightmare. We've had to lie to everybody. We are true singers, but that maniac Frank Farian would never allow us to express ourselves," he said. The Grammys would then revoke their award and essentially end their careers. In 2020, Jada Pinkett Smith famously admitted to an "entanglement" with singer August Alsina while she and her husband, Will Smith, were separated but still married. She made this admission on an episode of her show Red Table Talk, with husband Will present. And in 2023, Jada Pinkett Smith revealed on The Today Show that she and Will had been separated since 2016, living "completely separate lives." She later revealed that she and Will had not referred to each other as "husband" or "wife" in years — and that she was surprised to hear Will refer to her as his "wife" when he slapped Chris Rock. The Smiths apparently do not plan on divorcing. Speaking of Will admitted in his memoir Will that he once considered murdering his father. This came decades after witnessing his father punch his mother in his youth, "so hard that she collapsed." He continued, "I saw her spit blood," stating that the moment — and his failure to stand up for her — defined who he is. As an adult caring for his father, who had cancer, he thought again of this moment. "One night, as I delicately wheeled him from his bedroom toward the bathroom, a darkness arose within me. The path between the two rooms goes past the top of the stairs. As a child I'd always told myself that I would one day avenge my mother. That when I was big enough, when I was strong enough, when I was no longer a coward, I would slay him." He realized, at the top of the staircase, "I could shove him down, and easily get away with it." However, "As the decades of pain, anger, and resentment coursed then receded, I shook my head and proceeded to wheel Daddio to the bathroom." In her memoir, Jessica Simpson admitted to having had an "emotional affair" with Johnny Knoxville. She was married to Nick Lachey at the time, though she said things never got physical. "But to me, an emotional affair was worse than a physical one," she wrote. "It's funny, I know, because I had placed such an emphasis on sex by not having it before marriage. After I actually had sex, I understood that the emotional part was what mattered. Johnny and I had that, which seemed far more of a betrayal to my marriage than sex." Britney Spears also had a lot to reveal in her memoir, especially when it came to her relationship with Justin Timberlake. In the book, she confirmed the longstanding rumor that she had cheated on Timberlake, revealing she'd made out with Wade Robson one night, but also said he had already cheated on her multiple times in their relationship. She also revealed that she'd had an abortion while the two were together and claimed she hadn't wanted to but that Justin had pushed her to abort. Prince Harry had plenty to reveal in his memoir Spare, including that the first time he had sex was "a humiliating episode with an older woman who liked macho horses and who treated me like a young stallion" and took place in a field behind a pub. He wrote, "I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and sent me away." He also revealed a story about getting frostbite on his penis after a charity expedition to the North Pole. His ears and cheeks also got frostbite, but quickly healed: "While the ears and cheeks were already healing, the todger wasn't. It was becoming more of an issue by the day," he wrote in the book. He tried using Elizabeth Arden cream, eventually giving in and going to a doctor when that didn't work. Unfortunately, he was still dealing with the issue at his brother William's famous wedding to Kate Middleton. One more Prince Harry reveal from his book: he clarified old reports about him and William not being circumcised. "Mummy had forbidden it, they all said, and while it's absolutely true that the chance of getting penile frostbite is much greater if you're not circumcised, all the stories were false. I was snipped as a baby," he revealed. Ariana Grande once seemingly revealed the size of Pete Davidson's penis, tweeting that it was "10 inches." Davidson denied the rumors, calling them "simply not true" and saying that Ariana "has very little hands. Everything is f—ing huge to her." In one of the more bizarre confessions in this post, Colin Farrell revealed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that he was once an attempted murder suspect. During a "true confessions" game, he said that as a teenager, he'd been brought in for questioning about an attempted murder — which, by the way, was never solved — because he looked like the pencil sketch of the perpetrator. "I was in Sydney, Australia, and I was pulled in by the cops. And they showed me a photo of the pencil sketch of the guy that had attempted to murder this other gentleman, had beat him up and left him in his own apartment and set the apartment on fire and split, thereby leaving the guy to burn to death, and it was me. They said, what do you think about that picture? And I went, 'I think I'm in trouble,'" Farrell revealed. "Yeah, it was terrifying. I was there for about six hours, and then thankfully, a friend of mine had kept a journal, and that particular night, and that particular time, we were at a party on the other side of town doing Ecstasy." In another bizarre confession, Kevin Gates once revealed he not only had sex with his cousin but continued a multiyear relationship with her. After the two were already sleeping together, he introduced her to his grandma, who revealed, "Baby, that's your cousin!" But, Gates continued, "I ain't about to stop! The damage has been done. I didn't know you my whole life. I just found this out. We've already been thuggin'. And we still good friends to this day." Halsey kind of iconically revealed that G-Eazy had cheated on her while performing onstage at SNL in 2019. During her performance of "Without Me," text appeared on the stage behind her, reading "I'm so sorry Ashley I cheated" with multiple places popping up, such as "At home in Los Angeles," and "In Minneapolis," along with "more places I can't even remember." Fans assumed this was in reference to Halsey's most recent ex. Hunter Schafer revealed that Dominic Fike had cheated on her during an episode of Call Her Daddy. She said she'd discovered his cheating by going through his phone, which she wasn't proud of. However, she chose not to go into more detail: "What happened with that was between me and him, and I want to keep it, and I want to protect that," she told host Alex Cooper. Also appearing on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Megan Fox revealed the plastic surgeries that she's gotten done — a nose job and three boob jobs. She also said there's a third procedure that she's done, but she declined to say what it was. "There's one thing I had done that I'm gatekeeping because it was really good, and it's not a known plastic surgery. People don't even really know about it," she told Cooper. Kylie Jenner similarly admitted she had gotten lip fillers after long denying the rumors on an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. She later told Complex she had been worried about being a bad influence on young fans and that she "didn't want people to think you had to get your lips done to feel good about yourself." She continued, "But they thought it was crazier that I was lying about it because it was so obvious. I wish I had just been honest and upfront." After also having previously denied plastic surgery, Bella Hadid admitted to having had a nose job at 14 — and said she regretted it. "I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors. I think I would have grown into it," she said. However, she also said, "I have never used filler. Let's just put an end to that. I have no issue with it, but it's not for me. Whoever thinks I've gotten my eyes lifted or whatever it's called - it's face tape! The oldest trick in the book." In contrast, Heidi Montag revealed pretty much right away that she'd gotten plastic surgery at age 23. And not just one procedure — she'd gotten ten done in one day. "I think I look way better and I'm way happier," she told People. "Nobody ages perfectly, so I plan to keep using surgery to make me as perfect as I can be." Later, in 2018, she revealed she actually died for a minute as a result of the surgeries, scaring her husband, Spencer Pratt. "Spencer thought he lost me," she said. "My security guards called Spencer and told him, 'Heidi's heart stopped. She's not going to make it.' And I easily could've. Cutting yourself up isn't something I'd recommend." She has continued to express regret in later years, revealing she had long-term health complications and saying, "I was way too young to make such a life-changing decision." One more Call Her Daddy example: Cole Sprouse admitted on the podcast that he'd lost his virginity at age 14. He was on a family vacation in Florida and "met this girl who was older." After initially making out the first night, he knocked on her hotel door the next night and invited her to the beach. There: "I finally mustered up enough courage to deliver a line that my brother has never, ever let down for me. I looked at her, and I was like: 'So are you, like, DTF?' She goes: 'What?' And I go: 'You know, down to fuck?'" They had to kick Cole's brother Dylan and a friend out of the room, and Cole told Dylan "to go play chess or something." Cole revealed he "lasted about 20 seconds and never talked to her again." Ashton Kutcher has also told the story of the first time he had sex. He called his first time "horrible" and "really awkward" and said that it happened "out in the woods with a girl I had just met" when he was only 15. "The whole thing lasted two seconds," he said. However, a couple of years later, he had sex with her again "just to show her the first performance was a fluke and I'd gotten better.' Zayn Malik admitted he wasn't sure if he'd ever been in love, despite having been engaged and sharing a child with Gigi Hadid after a long-term relationship. "When you ask me, 'What is love?' I think the reason that's hard for me to answer that question is I don't know if I've ever actually truly been in love," he said, waxing poetic about what love is. While he loves his child, he said, he wasn't sure he'd been "in love with somebody who is a complete separate entity. They're not my family. I have no blood with them, like, 'I'm in love with this person.' I don't know." "You can never really pinpoint, I think, what is love. There's ways you can show love. You can express it. That's our human understanding of it, but what is love? It's an intangible thing, right? We can't hold it in our hands. It's not something that exists," he said. Looking back at times he thought he'd been in love, he said, "Your perspective changes it, right? You look back on it with new eyes, and you're like, 'Well, maybe I wasn't in love there.' But that's time. So, is it love? Or is it life experience that we are going through? Who knows?" Dax Shepherd similarly admitted in 2019 that he wasn't sure he wanted to be with Kristen Bell when they were first dating. "I never ever was like, 'Oh, I hope I can keep Kristen.' I was going, 'Do I want to be with a Christian, who has eight people living in her house for free, who has to get out of a car when there's a dog who doesn't have a leash and ruin her whole day to rescue this dog? That's great, and she's good, but that's not what I want to do," he said he thought. "I'm not that good. I don't want to spend my day finding the owner of a dog. So I wasn't fearful I would lose her. I wasn't certain I wanted to be with someone like that." Bell also admitted that the two actually broke up a few months into dating and that Shepherd was seeing other people. "He sat me down and said, 'I can't have this right now. I think you're wonderful, but I am still dating other people.' And then I, like, liquefied and fell to the ground, but I felt incredibly respected that he had the balls to tell me we weren't in the same place." However, Shepherd changed his mind, calling Bell to tell her, "I don't know what I was thinking. I was dating someone else, but they're just not as interesting as you, and I don't know what I'm doing." Bethenny Frankel admitted that she had never liked sex with her ex-husband Jason Hoppy, saying on her podcast that she used to have to "force" herself to have sex with him. "He used to say to me, 'You're like a block of ice,' because I did not want to be intimate. I did not want to have sex," she said. "I used to force myself, gag myself through doing it…it is torture." And finally, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Chad Kroeger revealed years ago to Playboy that he'd once performed oral sex on himself. So...I guess it is possible. What celeb reveal can you never forget? Let us know in the comments.
