Miley Cyrus has spoken out about the biggest misconception surrounding her late godmother, Dolly Parton.
Cyrus, 33, sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe for a new interview in which she pushed back against the idea that Parton was anything less than genuine beneath her famous glamor. The “Wrecking Ball” singer explained that fans often fixated on the surface-level spectacle of the country legend’s persona without grasping what lay beneath it.
“She’s known for, I guess, the faux, the fake, the hair, the makeup, the show of it, but there’s a part of her that’s just what I think everyone gravitates toward — how real she is and how authentic she is,” Cyrus said during the Apple Music interview.
The “Flowers” hitmaker also revealed that her final conversation with Parton centered on her latest album, “Bass Persuades,” Cyrus told Lowe that she had been describing the record to her godmother in what would turn out to be their last exchange before Parton’s death on Aug. 25 at age 80 following a private battle with cancer.
“The time that we talked, which was the last time we would talk, it was actually me telling her about this record,” she said.
Cyrus noted that their differences were precisely what made their bond so strong. “Because even though we are so different, that’s what made us so perfect for each other is that she knew this, and I know this,” she added.
Parton’s guidance had shaped Cyrus’s understanding of fame from the earliest stages of her career. The singer recalled how her godmother helped her navigate the intense spotlight that came with starring on the Disney Channel’s “Hannah Montana” while she was still figuring out her own identity away from cameras.
“There was a time in my life, I mean, we hit on it with Hannah [Montana], so much of my life’s about persona,” Cyrus said. She credited Parton with showing her that maintaining a public image did not require sacrificing one’s true self. “I think a way that I could look at that as, you can still have a persona and still be who you are, is because I had Dolly,” she explained.
Their perspectives on performance sometimes diverged in telling ways. Cyrus remembered breaking down on stage and how Parton responded with characteristic directness, viewing music as a form of escape rather than emotional confrontation. “She was like, ‘Music is escapism. Let them cry. Get through it,'” Cyrus recalled. Her own reaction was equally straightforward: “I know, but this is who I am.” Parton, she said, “loved [her] for it.”
A particular memory from their 2023 New Year’s Eve special on NBC, “Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party,” stayed with Cyrus. Performing “I Will Always Love You” alongside Parton, she grew emotional at the recognition that her godmother’s guidance would not last forever.
“So many of my really stabilizing peers that I have in my life, they’re generations before me,” Cyrus 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?'”
That phone call was something Cyrus said she “always did with Dolly,” whom she described as having been “always right about stuff.”
In the immediate aftermath of Parton’s death, Cyrus mourned her “Aunt Dolly” in an emotional social media tribute. She wrote at the time that the “feeling of losing” the country star was “beyond what feels right to share.” She also disclosed in the post that “One of our last conversations was about music and metamorphosis,” adding a butterfly emoji.
The “Jolene” singer’s death at 80 came after she kept her cancer diagnosis private. Cyrus’s reflections in the Apple Music interview mark her most extensive public comments on their relationship since that loss.
Cyrus is expected to continue promotional appearances for “Bass Persuades” in the coming weeks.