On Thursday’s episode of “Miley: The Zane Lowe Interview”, singer, songwriter, rock star, and Gen Z Mother Miley Cyrus shared the details of her final conversation with her godmother, Dolly Parton.
Before Parton’s passing at the end of August, she’d been an unwavering mentor to Cyrus. And in what turned out to be her last call with the country music icon, the two reportedly discussed Cyrus’ new album “Bass Persuades”, which comes out Friday.
This will be Cyrus’ first album dropping her last name (no offense, Billy!), marking a turn in her career that she navigated with Parton by her side.
Though “Bass Persuades” will be Cyrus’ first release without her godmother, Parton’s apparently still a part of it. “When I get a vinyl printed, [Dolly’s] the first person I send it to, since I’ve been making vinyls. This time around, I’m gonna send her a vinyl because I always do,” she explained.
Another part of the interview focused on how Parton depicted everything that made the two musicians so different, as well as everything that made them similar. Both Cyrus and Parton are masters of navigating a persona while also being profoundly genuine and true to themselves, and Cyrus credits Parton with modeling that lifestyle: “Sometimes I call what I do drag because the way I present myself is so different than the person who feeds a tortoise every morning. But again, that person’s inside of me, I just kind of have her off…so much of my life is 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 had Dolly.”
The connection between these two powerhouses—one that blazed the trail and one that walks it in her own completely original way—has obviously been an enduring influence and pillar in Cyrus’ career. Her new album is that much more special, both to her and to her fans, for being the last that Dolly got to hear.
