Billy Ray Cyrus: ‘Music is in Miley’s soul’

Miley Cyrus makes music because she loves it, according to her father Billy Ray Cyrus.
The 23-year-old singer has hit headlines for her controversial behaviour more than her musical offerings over the past couple of years. But Billy believes that creating songs is in Miley’s soul.
“I tell my kids: Make art because you love it,” he explained to Spin magazine. “When she was little, Miley walked hand-in-hand with me and (rockabilly icon) Carl Perkins through this field out here (in Tennessee). She was just a little, teeny girl. I’m talking three, four, five years old. Holding hands with Carl Perkins, the hand that wrote Blue Suede Shoes and was basically one of the founding fathers of rock’n’roll.
“For she and I both to have that great man between us… He’s telling me about his philosophy of music, which I absorbed like a sponge. The fact that he said, ‘Do what you do because you love it and, most of all, do it because it’s real and that’s your passion’. Well, there were a little set of ears down there connected to Miley’s head, and she absorbed that stuff too.”
Billy is no stranger to hitting headlines either. He first made a name for himself as a country singer when he released his debut album in 1992 and has had countless hits since then, with his most famous being Achy Breaky Heart. His personal life has also attracted attention over the years, with his marriage to wife Tish coming close to breaking point several times with both parties filling for divorce on separate occasions. However, he and Tish worked through their issues and are now happier than ever, and Billy insists he has learned to accept every story written about him – whether it’s positive or negative.
“I was recently reading some tabloid s**t, and I was like, ‘Where do people make this s**t up?’ Nothing’s changed, man,” he sighed. “Nothing’s really changed except now the internet has become a part of that monster. You just gotta look at it and embrace it and go, as Dolly Parton once told me, ‘Okay, that s**t sells records.’ I think Elvis said, ‘Just make sure there’s still your name on it.’ If they ain’t talking about you, you probably ain’t doing nothing.”