He has been on the front line of the music industry for years, he has had his own television series and his fans number in the millions around the world.
However, it wasn't until a few days ago that Miley Cyrus won her first two Grammys: best solo performance and best album of the year for Flowers.
This clear injustice had his fans angry for a long time.
However, the news that Miley was finally going to be able to display her precious golden gramophone on her shelves was completely overshadowed by another fact that attracted much more attention.
What really shook the foundations of her fan clubs, of the artist's tribute accounts on social media, and of the newsrooms of the United States tabloid press, happened during the acceptance speech for the second of the awards.
“Thank you to everyone who is on this stage right now.
Tom, Tyler, Michael and Greg.
Our teams, my team, Crush, Columbia, my mom, my sister, my love, my gays because look how pretty I am!
I don't think I've forgotten anyone, although maybe I've forgotten to put on underwear.
“Goodbye!”, the artist thanked, displaying her usual sense of humor.
The room burst into applause animated by the joke and perhaps many of those present did not realize it but yes, someone had been forgotten.
None other than her father, Billy Ray.
What was going on?
The truth is that it was not the first time that tensions within the Cyrus family came to light, even if in a veiled way.
“I have a close and intimate relationship with my family,” Miley declared in 2021 to the British edition of
Vogue magazine.
“But like all families, it is also complex.”
Miley did not go into much more detail in this interview but, as we later learned, the family was not going through a good time, mainly due to the difficult relationship between her parents.
Some problems that had been going on for a long time and that, as we will see, are also related to the Grammy speech.
Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus (Miley's mother) met in 1991 at a bar.
There was only one year left for him to become an international star, responsible for taking country music, a genre that is usually not given any attention outside the United States, to the top of the charts around the world.
Achy Breaky Heart
changed all that, but at that time, Billy's life was far from perfect: he was going through a miserable time, he lived in his car and nothing suggested the success that awaited him.
Tish already had two children from a previous relationship, Brandi and Trace, and had stopped drinking.
It was precisely this detail that most attracted Billy Ray, who found his experiences with alcohol and addictions, both personal and family, very traumatic.
Miley was their first child together, born in 1992, just a few months before the couple said yes and started a new life together, already with a very healthy checking account after the success of their first single, on a farm. of Tennessee.
Their other two children were born there, Braison (1994) and Noah (2000).
Billy Ray Cyrus with his daughter Miley Cyrus in 1994. Rick Diamond (Getty Images)
From a very young age it was clear that Miley had something special and was willing to follow in her father's footsteps in show business.
The opportunity came when she had just turned eleven.
Miley went to auditions for a new television series that would air on the Disney Channel and would end up being Hannah Montana.
Miley initially aspired to play the role of Hannah's best friend, Lilly, but she ended up being offered the lead role due to her qualities as a singer and dancer.
At that time, Billy Ray's musical career was not going through its best moment.
Achy Breaky Heart
was already very far away in time and, after that success, country fans had forgotten the singer a little.
Perhaps it was precisely because of that feeling of discomfort with fame that, when the opportunity arose for Miley, her father opposed her becoming an actress.
In an interview given in 2013 by the artist to
Rolling Stone
magazine , the pop star referred to the issue, justifying, in part, the behavior of her parent.
“I think he didn't want me to experience any kind of rejection in my life,” Miley said.
“I didn't want the industry to end up hurting me.”
That was perhaps the first time father and daughter collided.
The opposite happened with Tish.
The mother of the future Hannah Montana saw this opportunity in her daughter's life as a reflection of those she had missed in her youth, when she aspired to be a dancer, because of her anxiety.
“My mother had never dared to take the step, so she wanted me to have the opportunity to pursue an artistic career.
"I also suffer from anxiety," the artist confessed, "but she didn't want my anxiety to stop me in the same way it had happened to her."
In any case, this first crack in Miley and her father's relationship did not go any further.
Everything remained the same between them and, in fact, Hannah Montana helped revive her father's career.
After Miley's signing, Disney contacted Billy Ray to play the father of her daughter's character, Robby Ray Stewart, in fiction.
The singer had doubts about him because he did not want to interfere in his daughter's program, but the two had a natural chemistry on screen and he finally accepted the role.
As everyone knows, the series was an absolute success and made Miley a child star.
Thanks to this success, Billy also returned to the front lines of today, participating in a season of
Dancing with the stars
and releasing a new country album that had significant success.
Home at Last,
released by none other than Walt Disney Records, linked him even more to the Californian multinational.
Miley Cyrus and her father Billy Ray Cyrus at the 'Hannah Montana: The Movie' premiere in 2009.Tim P. Whitby (Getty Images)
“This series has destroyed the Cyrus family”
Problems between Miley and her father simmered during the broadcast of Hannah Montana between 2006 and 2011. Money and fame flooded family life as the artist grew older.
Billy and Tish's marriage also suffered from all these changes and, in fact, in 2011 they began divorce proceedings.
Billy Ray left the family home in Los Angeles and moved to live alone at his old ranch.
He was a totally devastated man as seen in an article published earlier that year in the American edition of GQ magazine, titled none other than “Mr.
“Hannah Montana's Achy Broken Heart.”
“Entering this industry is a highway to darkness,” said the singer.
That he literally recognized, when asked by the journalist, that his family was being attacked by Satan.
“There has always been a battle between good and evil.
There always will be.
You think: 'this is an opportunity to entertain, to bring families together...' and he looks at what it has become.
The program destroyed my family.
"This is what I'm telling you: the damn program destroyed my family."
In the same piece the singer expressed his wish that the series had never existed.
Billy Ray was clearly in the hole and was thus immortalized in this interview.
As if this were not enough, the moment coincided with the leak of a video recorded on Miley's eighteenth birthday in which the singer appeared smoking what everyone thought was marijuana from a water pipe (even though it was finally revealed). He clarified that it was sage).
Upon seeing the images, Billy had tweeted: “Sorry guys.
I had no idea.
I just saw the images with my own eyes.
I am so sad.
This has already gotten out of my control.”
But when all seemed lost, the divorce suit was dropped and the family was reunited.
Leticia Cyrus, Miley Cyrus and Billy Ray Cyrus in 2009. Frazer Harrison (Getty Images)
“We ask for your respect at this time”
Things were never the same within the Cyrus family from that moment on.
Although for a few years everything seemed to have calmed down, in 2013 Tish once again filed a lawsuit to divorce Billy.
“This is a personal matter and we are working to find a solution that is best for our family.
We ask for your respect at this time,” Tish explained in a statement to the press.
Meanwhile, Miley's career rose like a rocket, increasing her number of fans and also detractors thanks to scandals such as her torrid and famous performance at the MTV Video Music Awards with Robin Thicke.
The divorce was called off again just a couple of months after it was filed, and for a few years everything seemed to be working out for the marriage again.
However, in these comings and goings, it is easy to assume that the distance between Miley and her parents was widening, a fact that takes us directly to the moment when the artist stopped following her father on Instagram.
Billy Ray Cyrus and Miley Cyrus in 2021.Peacock (NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
The final fireworks (so far)
In April 2022, Tish asked Billy Ray for divorce again and this time it would be final.
After almost thirty years married, a decade of conflict and two years of living apart, the iconic marriage came to an end.
This fact, as happens in all families, caused a real cataclysm among the Cyruses, with the children taking sides with one or the other of their parents.
Although the reasons have never been entirely clear, Miley completely aligned herself with her mother, unfollowing her father on Instagram and being her mother's bridesmaid at her mother's wedding to actor Dominic Purcell (Lincoln Burrows in Prison
Break
) which was held in the middle of last year.
For his part, Billy Ray didn't waste any time either and in October 2023 he married the Australian singer Firerose, 27 years his junior.
This marriage was perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back in the relationship between father and daughter, and that ultimately caused his father to be “forgotten” in the Grammy acceptance speech.
However, neither of them has commented on the matter and, taking into account the family's history, it is likely that this will not be the last chapter of the relationship between them.