Miley Cyrus Reveals How She Ended Family Drama

Miley Cyrus is lifting the curtain on her family’s decade of drama — and how they reconciled without therapy.

During the press tour for her album Something Beautiful, Miley shared new details about the ups and downs that her family has experienced over the years, including recently revealing that she is now on good terms with her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus. In a new chat with Monica Lewinsky, Miley, 32, got even more candid about the recent rough patch her family went through.

“My family and I have had a really difficult… What did you call your decade? Dark decade. Yeah, we had one of those,” Miley told the activist, 51, on the Tuesday, June 10 episode of her Wondery podcast, Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.

“Half of us weren’t speaking to each other at one point, and we cleaned all that up,” the singer continued. “That was a really important part of my year this year, was all of my family putting those lines of communication back together. A lot because of, you know, I had a lot of loyalty to my mom [Tish Cyrus], the way that families do when parents get divorced.”

Facing the drama between not only herself and her parents but also her five siblings was no small feat, as conflict had been piling up for years with no resolution, Miley explained. 

“In that situation,” the “Flowers” hitmaker told Lewinsky, “I watched what happens when you don’t clean things up as they’re happening. They really do stack, and then all of a sudden you go, ‘Oh my God, it’s been 10 years, and this is a mess that I barely even know how to start. This is like emotional hoarding.’”

And the “End of the World” artist had an unexpected approach to resolving some of this emotional “mess,” she revealed. She started with joy.

“But I just kind of bust through the pile that’s stacked, and just go, ‘I’m here. You’re here. Let’s start by having a good time together.’ And then as we start bringing some happiness and joy into each other’s life, then we’ll just be in a better place to have these conversations. ‘Cause I’d rather get it balanced first,” the pop star said.

As for whether family counseling was ever utilized in the family’s conflict resolution, Miley said, “We’re so messy we didn’t even do any of that,” later adding that “to get each other in a room to even get to counseling would have been a war. So it was easier to just go, ‘White flag.’ ”

And part of family conflict — specifically the tension between herself and dad Billy Ray — actually inspired a track she is currently working on, not for Something Beautiful, but for an upcoming album, Miley revealed.

“I mean, I even wrote a song about it that’s actually not on this album,” she told Lewinsky. “I’m working on another album, and that’s a song that I’m working on called ‘Secrets.’ ”

“And I wrote this song about my dad,” she continued, “because I wanted him to tell me even though there were secrets, even though I didn’t really want to know. 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.”

Miley “always wanted my family to feel like I was the safe place, that I always had the white flag when they came to talk to me.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Miley also gave a bit more insight into her parents’ relationships with her, as well as with each other. (Billy Ray and Tish divorced in 2022 after almost three decades of marriage. The exes welcomed three children together, Braison, Miley and Noah, and Billy Ray also adopted Tish’s children, Brandi and Trace.)

Both of her parents, Miley told Lewinsky, are “chronically polite,” Tish, 58, she explained, “will stay in something that makes her uncomfortable for way too long, not wanting to hurt somebody, and at the end, it’s just so excruciating for her.” Billy Ray, 63, meanwhile, “does the same thing” but “processes it differently.”

The “Walk of Fame” musician went on to describe her dad as “intelligent” and “very intuitive,” explaining that when those qualities combine, they “can be very deceiving.” And, after Lewinsky added that that combination can also be “manipulative,” Miley tentatively agreed.

“Manipulative? Watching that word, but yes, because it does come from this really beautiful, poetic place. But he’s also a politician, so he is getting my vote,” she explained of Billy Ray, later adding that “growing up with actually a political background, I think, really affected me in more ways than I understood until I got to be in my 30s.”

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Miley’s enlightening appearance on the Reclaiming podcast comes shortly after she shared a rare public statement about family “rumors” — including addressing claims about Tish, days after she appeared to unfollow Miley on Instagram.

“I rarely comment on rumors, but my mama and I are too tight for anything to ever come between us,” the star wrote on Instagram Stories last month. “She’s my best friend. Like a lot of moms, she doesn’t know how to work her phone and somehow unfollowed me — simple, coincidental, and uninteresting.”

The Grammy winner then addressed her relationship with her dad, noting that the pair have “had our challenges over the years.”

“Now, in my thirties, family is my priority above all else,” Miley concluded. “I’m at peace knowing bridges have been built and time has done a lot of healing. Grateful for the good health and love that flows through my family.”