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Miley Cyrus revealed her final conversation with godmother Dolly Parton, saying the country music icon’s advice helped her understand how to maintain a larger-than-life public persona without losing sight of who she was away from the stage.
“I’m just trying to keep myself together, but the time that we talked, which was the last time we would talk, it was actually me telling her about this record, because even though we are so different, that is what made us so perfect for each other,” Cyrus told Apple Music presenter Zane Lowe, talking about her 10th and latest studio album Bass Persuades.
The “Flowers” singer explained that Parton had long been “the first person” she sent a vinyl record to whenever she had one printed. “And this time around I was going to send her a vinyl because I always do,” she said.
Parton died on 25 August in Nashville at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer.
Cyrus paid tribute to her godmother the following day, saying the “feeling of losing my Aunt Dolly is beyond what feels right to share”.
“Our most sacred moments were private and they’ll stay there behind the stage, beneath the glamour and between our hearts,” she wrote at the time. “What I know is Dolly would want me to feel it, write a song about it, and then continue on and be strong. I have an angel by my side. I always have. One of our last conversations was about music and metamorphosis.”
Speaking to Lowe, Cyrus recalled how Parton’s advice helped her make sense of her own relationship with performance, especially during her years as Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel.
“She’s known for the fake, the hair, the makeup, and the show of it,” said Cyrus. “But there’s a part of her that I think is what everyone gravitates towards – how real she is and how authentic she is.
“There was a time in my life – we hit on it with Hannah – so much of my life was about persona. And I think a way that I could look at that as you can have a persona and still be who you are is because I’d Dolly.”
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The “Wrecking Ball” singer likened her public persona to doing drag “because the way that I present myself is just someone that is so different from the person that feeds the tortoise every morning”.
“But again, that person’s inside of me. I just kind of have her off,” she said.
Cyrus talked about her tendency to cry on stage, bringing up her performance of “End of the World” on David Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction in 2024 which she said was about “the world ending and me never seeing my mom again”.
“I start crying and she watched me on Letterman and was like, ‘What are you crying about?’” Cyrus said.
Lowe said Parton was likely trying to tell her goddaughter to “be professional”. Cyrus agreed, saying “that’s pretty much what she said”.
“She was like, ‘Music is escapism. Let them cry. You need to get through it.’ And I was like, ‘I know, but this is who I am.’ And she loved me for it.”
Cyrus also talked about performing “I Will Always Love You” with Parton during the NBC special Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party in 2022, saying the “Jolene” singer “knew at that time that the reason I was crying is the reason that I cry now”.
“So many of my really stabilising peers that I have in my life [come from] generations before me,” she said. “And they’ve laid down, brick by brick, the road that I travel now. And they aren’t always going to be here for me to call them and say, ‘What do I do now?,’ which I always did with Dolly.”
“And she was always right. It’s like how your mom’s always right, and when you are a kid, you are like, ‘What does she know?’ And then as you get older, you’re like, ‘How? Where did this come from? You’re just a normal person. Why do you know everything?’ Dolly was just always right about stuff.”
Parton was a recurring presence in Cyrus’s career, appearing as Aunt Dolly in three episodes of Hannah Montana before they collaborated musically on “Rainbowland” and performed “Jolene” together at the 2019 Grammy Awards.
They also reunited in the recording studio for a reimagined rendition of Cyrus’s 2013 song “Wrecking Ball” for Parton’s 2023 album Rockstar, where the lyric “I will always want you” was changed to “I will always love you”.