Billy Ray Cyrus knows daughter Miley Cyrus will definitely love him now that he’s turned 64 because she showed him in a song. The country singer celebrated his birthday this week with a very special gift from his daughter: an unreleased song called “Secrets” featuring two of his all-time favorite rock stars.
“For my birthday, Miley gave me the gift of music and wrote me a song called ‘Secrets’ and got my favorite musicians Fleetwood Mac to play on it! I love you Mile,” Billy Ray wrote on Instagram in a birthday post on Monday in which he wanders around in a field seemingly listening to the gentle ballad on his phone with a big smile on his face.
“Secrets, I want to keep your secrets/ Like sunlight in the shadows/ Like footsteps in the grass,” Miley sings on the track. “I won’t ever break my promise/ Like a songbird in the silence/ Like stones against the glass.” According to People, Miley previewed the song featuring Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham in June during her interview on Monica Lewinsky’s podcast, in which she talked about how writing the song helped her resolve the long-running tensions between her and her dad.
“I wrote this song about my dad because I wanted him to tell me even though there were secrets, even though I didn’t really want to know,” she told Lewinsky. “I wanted to be the one he felt safe enough to tell me the things that were damning and damaging to the family. I wanted him to think that as a middle child, I’m old enough that I could take some of that.”
That’s not the only way Billy Ray is celebrating. The singer said he’s also giving back this year by sharing a remix of his breakthrough 1990 hit, “Achy Breaky Heart.” In an Instagram post featuring throwback video from his mega-mullet days, Cyrus wrote, “From the very first time I sang ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ in the spring of ’91 to this remix today, it’s all because of YOU. I teamed up with [the song’s writer] Don Von Tress and The Johnson Mill Branch Boys on a brand-new ‘Achy Breaky Heart (Remix)’ as my gift to the fans. None of this would have been possible without the support of y’all through the years.”
“Achy Breaky Heart” hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot Country singles and tracks chart back in the day, giving Cyrus his biggest chart hit until his 2018 remix team-up with Lil Nas X on the Hot 100 No. 1 smash “Old Town Road.”