Billy Ray Cyrus’s new album, The Hill, drops on June 16. It’s named for a hill on his Tennessee property where his mother is buried. His mother’s passing partially inspired the album, which is his first original material in over a decade. Billy Ray sat down for a cover interview with People to promote The Hill. He spoke about his music, making amends with his children, and a recent health scare. He also talked about his relationship with Elizabeth Hurley. Here are some excerpts:
On going back to work: “I had entered a period where I hadn’t worked for a really long time. And then I realized today, I said, ‘Cyrus, you’re working now, man. Be careful what you ask for. You said you wanted to get on the ride? Well, here you go.’ ”
34 years sober: “I am the most sober person in the world. I did drink a lot until 1992, and I just quit. After 10 years of failure and being told no, I finally got a record deal, and that inner voice said, ‘This is going to happen, but you have to stop drinking.’ So I just stopped.”
Why it took so long for him and Tish Cyrus to get divorced: “Sometimes change is scary, and I’ll keep doing the wrong thing for a long time because I’m scared of change. But when I finally do get the courage up to commit in my mind and say, ‘I’m going to do this,’ then that’s the way it is. No looking back. I think that’s maybe sometimes good for everyone—to just let go.”
Family is complicated: [W]hile he may joke that he was “never going to be parent of the year,” Cyrus’ pride in the adults his kids have grown up to be is apparent. “Life is a series of adjustments, and I think my family always knew that. We’ve all been through a lot, and we’ve seen a lot. Whatever happened is in the rearview mirror,” he says. “The past is over and done. The future is what we have, and we got to look forward.”
Plus, the family that plays together stays together: [His 32-year-old son] Braison produced and helped co-write The Hill, Noah duets with her dad on the record with track “On Our Way Along,” and Cyrus joined Miley to tape Disney+’s Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special in February. “All these years later it’s going back to our roots as a family,” Cyrus says. “And to be in this moment with them, it’s just a great celebration of our family.”
He was hospitalized with sepsis: That family also supported him through recent health crises. The country veteran was diagnosed with vocal paralysis in 2024 — following what he describes as a near-fatal bout of sepsis that left him hospitalized before a “miracle” recovery. The youngest member of his family, Braison’s son Bear, 5, also gave him [a] new perspective when he was still trying to find the light.
“In this very broken moment of my life, my little grandson Bear looked at me and said, ‘Try again.’ And up until that moment, he had never spoken to me at all. I wasn’t even sure if he knew my name. In that moment I thought, ‘He’s telling you something.’ Is it about love? Music? Somehow, I got to try again at both. So I’m learning to try again.”
His relationship with Liz: He says leaving Tennessee for the first time in five years to travel internationally with Hurley was the “craziest thing” he’s ever done, “but,” he adds, “I had to do it. This feels like something real.”
He’s in a good place: “What more could I ask for? I don’t have anything to complain about. I like how everything looks right now. I finally found this wonderful place where I’m happy.”
It’s nice that BRC and Liz found one another. They felt like such a random pairing at first, but now, they seem like a good match. It’s hard to believe they’ve only been together for just over a year. We’ve seen so much of them over the last year that it feels like they’ve been together for longer. It’s also nice that Billy Ray’s been working on repairing his relationship with his kids. That family is full of hillbilly drama, but they seem like a group of imperfect people trying to work their sh-t out.
Also, Billy Ray’s story about battling sepsis is so scary! That’s the first time he’s mentioned it publicly. I had a friend whose dad died from sepsis several years ago. They got him to the hospital as soon as possible, but it was still too late. Sepsis is on my list of scary medical conditions that can initially be mistaken for something else. Meningitis and hantavirus are also on that list. I’m really glad BRC survived and recovered.
Photos via Instagram and credit: James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon